Maiden Bathed in Blood

As soon as the blood-soaked little girl appeared, Menou made her move.

She didn’t hesitate or try to figure out who exactly this girl was. She just took the initiative.

Activating Guiding Enhancement, Menou was engulfed in the glow of Guiding Light as she closed the distance between them and slashed the girl’s throat with her dagger.

“…Mm?”

The girl, whose throat had been cut, fell backward with a dazed expression on her face.

Fresh blood sprayed through the air.

The small girl’s body crumpled to the ground, blood seeping from her slashed neck into the floor. A fatal wound. But of course, Menou didn’t let her guard down. The girl had fallen far too easily compared to the bizarre way she’d first arrived. There was no way killing her would be that simple.

There was obviously much more to this girl than met the eye.

The reason Menou didn’t hesitate to immediately go for a killing blow was that the option of trying to capture the girl hadn’t even occurred to her. Anyone who came crawling out of another person couldn’t possibly be a normal human. There was no way she was the innocent little girl she appeared to be.

Menou’s judgment was, of course, correct.

The girl’s throat had been cut wide open. The gash Menou left was deep. Foaming blood bubbled up from the girl’s lungs through her larynx and frothed out of the wound.

Then, suddenly, a hand reached up through the gash.

“Ngh!” Menou gasped.

As she watched, a second hand violently ripped the trachea open and emerged. The arms emerging from the girl’s throat pushed the wound open further as though trying to make a bigger exit.

With audible gnashing and tearing, the hands ripped open the wounds, pushed through the flesh, and bore through bone, tearing up the corpse until a little girl exactly like the dead one came crawling out.

“Mm-ah-ah, don’t be hasty. We haven’t even gotten started yet, have we?”

Emerging from the gaping hole in her own dead body, the little girl chided Menou cheerfully.

Her own corpse was at her feet, or perhaps it was more like a cast-off husk. Either way, that body had been living moments ago. Now it was gradually starting to melt away, as if its purpose had been served.

While the dead body decomposed, the second little girl who wore the very same face was perfectly unharmed.

The entire display was so grotesque and surreal that it would have made anyone lose their minds. As the blood drained from her face, Menou almost felt faint for a moment.

But this was reality.

Focusing on her pounding heart and her tunneling vision, Menou licked her lips. She took in a short breath and slowly exhaled.

That was enough to restore balance to her mental state. “I feel like I’m going crazy…,” she grumbled.

“No, not yet. It’s the next part that’s really going to be crazy funny. The starting bell hasn’t even rung yet, you know?”

While Menou carefully maintained a level head and even tone, the little girl giggled, soaked red with her own blood.

“It doesn’t seem like you’re…a demon that Manon summoned.”

“’Course not! I’m a real human girl from head to toe, see?”

Though she said this with a smile, it was clear she was no ordinary human.

“I see… I suppose you must be human, yes.” Menou chose her words carefully even as she cursed on the inside.

She should’ve realized something was off about the footage Momo brought back.

The spikes of the iron maiden trap that Momo triggered were coated in poison. Logically speaking, that meant the little girl inside shouldn’t have been alive in the first place. But she had survived being impaled by poisoned spikes because she was evil incarnate.

Perhaps the girl standing in front of Menou really was human. But even if that were true, she was still a taboo among taboos, more insidious than any demon or devil could ever hope to be.

Her use of these unbelievably terrifying conjurings was proof enough.

There was no doubt about it: This girl had to be an Otherworlder with a Pure Concept. In fact, she was the worst kind of all—a dreadful being who crossed beyond being called a lost one. Menou darkly muttered the special name of the calamities that caused such harm to the world.

“A Human Error…!”

Standing in front of her was the shadow of what was once an Otherworlder.

This was what happened when an Otherworlder used up all their old memories, cast off their humanity, and became the very incarnation of their Concept.

Her cherubic appearance meant nothing. Even on the inside, she was nothing more than a false image. This little girl had transformed into a Pure Concept, right down to her bone marrow.

In this case, the Pure Concept the girl was using was probably some form of sacrificial summoning-based conjuring. It was safe to assume that she used her own death as a sacrifice to summon herself. Killing this girl was essentially the same as offering her a sacrifice.

In other words, this girl couldn’t be killed. She was immortal, albeit through a different means than Akari.

“…This is bad.” Menou gripped the handle of her dagger tightly.

Frankly, this girl’s command of her Pure Concept was so thorough that it wasn’t even worth comparing to Akari, who had still only recently come to this world. What kind of Human Error was she? Menou had a feeling she knew the answer, but she didn’t want to say it aloud.

A single verse from the scripture crossed her mind:

The Concept of Original Sin was born from the wild thoughts of a single girl and spilled forth from her flesh and blood.

Anyone familiar with the concept of taboo knew these words, which seemed to fit the girl in front of her all too well. If Menou’s hunch was right, then this was the worst scenario imaginable.

“What’s with the scary face, lady? Come on. Just enjoy the ride.”

“What about this could I possibly enjoy, monster?”

“Mmm, a monster? Ouch. I practiced really hard while I was inside that girl and finally got the hang of talking. So let’s chat some more. Please?”

She took one step, then two, then three.

The little girl entered Menou’s range with carefree footsteps and leaned in close.

“Tell me, what’re your favorite hobbies? I like singing, and dancing, and watching movies! You can kinda practice singing and dancing on your own, but I’m so sad I can’t watch movies. What about you, lady?”

“Hobbies, hmm? I don’t really have any.”

As the little girl actually started a meaningless conversation, Menou responded quite bluntly.

Surprisingly enough, she didn’t sense any hostility from the girl in front of her. She didn’t even seem angry or unfriendly, never mind murderous. In fact, she looked for all the world like a perfectly ordinary little girl coming over to have a chat.

“Aww, that’s a shame. Hobbies make life worth living, you know? You should try to enjoy life more.”

“I’m far too busy to waste time on hobbies. It’s my job to kill people like you, after all.”

“Mmm! You? Kill me?”

“Yes, my goal is to destroy you. Your Pure Concept, that is. That’s the whole reason I exist.”

“Mmm, so you want to destroy my Pure Concept?”

Standing close enough that Menou could have reached out and patted her on the head, the harmless-looking girl looked up at her with wide, rounded eyes.

Then she started shrieking with laughter. The little girl seemed delighted by the threat of being killed.

“Wow, you say such funny things! You can kill me if you want, you know. It happens all the time. See, I’m super weak, so I die a lot. But I’m pretty sure you can’t destroy me.”

She was like a child who’d been given a new toy, accepting Menou’s threat like a present to be celebrated and played with. This strange reaction only put Menou even more on edge.

“If you think you can destroy me, just try it, okay? No one in this world has managed to do it, not even the Ivory hero, but go ahead and try!”

“The Ivory hero?” Menou furrowed her brow at the unfamiliar title.

“Mmm, you don’t know?!” The girl put her hand over her mouth in an exaggerated show of surprise. “But it was so amazing! The strongest, greatest, most powerful Pure Concept ever! The ‘White’ that brings purity and normalcy to the world!”

The little girl spread her arms wide and raised her voice. “Clouding the Star in the north, turning the Dragon to white salt in the west! Chasing the Vessel in the east far into the white night and sealing me in the white fog in the south! Ivory, the hero who destroyed and sealed us away and saved the world! The one who betrayed us when we tried to cast this world aside! Mm, but it wasn’t that person’s fault!”

She was speaking and gesturing with an air so dramatic it was somewhat out of place. The girl carried herself like a performer starring as the tragic heroine in a one-act play as she went on.

“That person was our friend, our comrade, our hope—and also the guardian of this world! The Pure Concept of Ivory got stuck with the role of protecting this stupid planet! That person’s own desires didn’t even matter anymore…!”

Her voice shook with sadness, and she lowered her head.

Then she abruptly looked up again, wearing a bright smile without a trace of grief.

“But now I get it. Everyone forgot about the hero. After all that hard work! Even though the hero got totally used up, it still slipped your mind!! …You know, I think that’s why I hated all of you so much.”

Menou replayed the girl’s words in her mind.

The Star in the north, the Dragon in the west, the Vessel in the east… She guessed the girl was talking about the Four Major Human Errors.

The Star in the north must be the Starhusk. The Vessel in the east was the Mechanical Society. Menou wasn’t sure how the Sword of Salt in the west became a Dragon, but this all happened a thousand years ago. It made sense that the little girl’s version might not line up with modern interpretations of the Human Errors.

At any rate, if what this girl said was true, it would mean that when those four infamous Pure Concepts threatened to destroy the world, they were stopped by a fellow Pure Concept holder called Ivory. In other words, an Otherworlder had saved this world.

Even Menou had never heard of such information. According to the church’s records, the Four Major Human Errors were sealed or destroyed by the church at the time.

But more pressingly, there was an important phrase in her story that held a clue to the girl’s identity.

“You said you were sealed in the ‘white fog in the south.’ Does that mean you’re…?”

“Mm, calm down. You said you’ll destroy me, right? I’m really happy! It’s been so long since someone seriously tried to do that to me. If you really mean it, let’s have an exciting, super-fun fight to the death! I’ve gotten so sick of doing nothing but eating my own kind!”

Interrupting Menou’s question, the girl held the hem of her dress and gave a refined curtsy.

“Thank you for coming today, and I wish you an auspicious day and good health! Please strike me, smash me, crush me to your heart’s content! There’s plenty more where that came from, so no need to hold back! Let’s see you really go crazy!”

She looked up from her deep curtsy and straightened out her spine.

It was like the introduction of an actress standing on stage as the curtain rose. As she gave this strange and unfamiliar speech to Menou, the girl reached her head up higher. She put a hand under her chin and slowly lifted it.

“What you’re about to see is the greatest B movie of all time. A game of chance where the devil rolls the dice.”

Of course, her head didn’t rise any higher than her neck. But still, she kept pushing it upward.

Soon, there was the snapping sound of fleshy fibers stretching. The girl’s smiling face went higher and higher as her neck stretched unnaturally. Muscle fibers have a certain elasticity; her neck slowly stretched out, just like it might on the corpse of a hanged man.

And it didn’t stop.

“Demons! Monsters! Demon lords! Devils and mysterious, monstrous gods! What will the roll of the dice bring next? You’ll just have to wait and see!”

Her skin, veins, and flesh went past their limits, snapping and tearing as her head went higher. Slowly, her head and neck were being separated from her body.

At last, there was a final crunch of bones breaking apart.

In the same moment, the girl twisted her own head sharply.

And her head came off completely.

Blood sprayed from the place where her head had been torn off by brute force.

The girl’s now-headless body collapsed to the ground. Her severed head, still smiling, rolled across the floor like a grotesque die being cast.

It was a completely unfathomable action. A suicide that went beyond abnormal.

Menou looked up wordlessly at the fountain of spraying blood.

As she dazedly looked on, the head rolled to the edge of her vision and landed looking up at the sky.

Then, the gushing blood before Menou’s eyes took on a red glow of Guiding Light.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [Can I call a hundred friends?]

The fountain of blood cut through space itself.

On the other side of the newly formed rift in the air was a dark abyss. The unnatural amount of blood gushing out of the girl’s neck transformed into an empty void that connected to the abyss.

What formed was none other than an entrance to the Concept Dimension of Original Sin.

Blood, flesh, and the fabric of space tore open, and monsters began to ooze out from the abyss.

One after another, an endless parade. No two monsters were alike. Even Menou, an Executioner, had never seen the likes of the monsters that appeared.

These summoned monsters immediately began devouring the little girl’s body. Her flesh and blood had been offered up as a sacrifice to them, after all. And there was no better sacrifice for these creatures than a pure maiden.

The innocent little girl’s body was consumed by the monsters in moments.

One of the monsters suddenly began to tremble. It shook violently and opened its mouth wide as if it was about to vomit something up.

Out of the monster’s gullet slid an unharmed little girl.

It was a girl of no more than ten years of age, with refined features and a white dress. She looked exactly like the little girl who had just been eaten.

She was a true menace, beyond even the most devilish mastermind. As the little girl was reborn out of the monster’s body and stepped onto the floor, she spread out her arms and smiled.

“A triple threat of fear, excitement, and thrills! The singing, dancing embodiment of a disaster movie! Yes, I am none other than Pandæmonium—mass of monsters!”

The Human Error who had once nearly destroyed the world had now been reborn in Libelle.

“Hrmm…”

In the knights’ station in Libelle, Ashuna heaved a sigh.

It was a languid, gloomy sigh, a far cry from her usual self. The monstrine incident was moving swiftly toward resolution. Libelle Castle had been sealed off. No doubt this was all the result of Momo’s attack on their base yesterday. She’d gotten enough proof that they could act on it.

But the arranged time of their meeting came and went, and Momo never showed up.

A member of the Fourth was being interrogated at the knights’ station. It was an old man who had turned himself in as soon as the island was sealed off—a central figure from the organization.

“I’m telling you, the head of the Fourth is now Manon Libelle! We’re just victims! That girl dosed us with monstrine and forced us to do her bidding!!”

The man insisted in a shrill voice that Manon Libelle was behind it all.

Instead of assisting with the interrogations directly, Ashuna was contemplating her next course of action.

“What should I do…?”

She was more concerned with Momo’s well-being than the developments with the Fourth. Knowing Momo’s personality, Ashuna assumed the girl would have come to brag about her success, even though she tried to act blasé. She was the sort of person who liked to assert dominance whenever possible.

So since she didn’t show up, there was a good possibility that something had happened to Momo the night before. But Ashuna Grisarika wasn’t the type to act just because someone had potentially been defeated in battle.

Ashuna was a devout believer in strength. It was not the strength of a group that she desired, but the strength of an individual.

If she had failed in her attack the night before, that meant Momo was weak. It would be proof that she was a disappointment, and Ashuna had encountered someone last night who was at least as interesting as Momo was anyway.

But Ashuna had taken a liking to Momo.

“Ashuna, come over here.”

In the back of her mind, Ashuna thought of her older sister, who was around the same height as Momo.

Few who knew her now would believe it, but Ashuna had loved painting pictures when she was little.

Ashuna was drawn to anything beautiful. She was always searching for beauty. The young princess wandered around the castle and beyond in search of subjects to paint, in search of sights that would tug at her heartstrings.

It was her eldest sister who kept an eye on Ashuna, who was a problem child in a much cuter way back then. She took young Ashuna’s hand and introduced her to a knight.

“Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”

The strongest knight on the continent.

When she saw that knight holding a sword, Ashuna abandoned her paintbrush and aimed to become a knight, too. She wanted to attain the beauty of strength for herself, instead of portraying it on a canvas.

Ashuna had natural talent. She quickly blossomed as a skilled knight and passed the exam with flying colors. She still clearly remembered what her older sister said to her that day.

“You have a real gift. But no matter how strong you become on your own, in a way, that doesn’t mean anything. The true value of humanity is in a group. Under the right leader, a group of humans can deal with any disaster. And so, Ashuna…”

Ashuna’s older sister, who was a head shorter than her, smirked haughtily.

“I’ll give you the honor of serving under me in my unit.”

In the end, Ashuna was somehow irked by all this and ran away from the royal family.

It was a simple case of disliking someone too similar to herself. But the likeness between Ashuna and her sister was not as close as it seemed.

Ashuna was entranced by the beauty of individuals, while her sister was the leader of a group.

In all likelihood, it was her older sister who was better suited to royalty. Rebelling against her sister and her family, Ashuna roamed the kingdom, accomplishing so many deeds that she became known as the world-reforming Princess Knight.

But in the midst of all these glorious escapades, Ashuna noticed something strange.

No matter where she went, she found no trace of her sister’s wrongdoings.

Surely there was no way her sister had never committed injustice or crime. Ashuna knew that her sister was a twisted royal of the Noblesse and an exceptional string puller. She had seen for herself that her sister had deep roots in the kingdom’s dark side.

And yet, she couldn’t find any proof of these darker activities. It didn’t seem like they were being hidden so much as completely erased.

Ashuna’s doubts finally grew to a point where she couldn’t ignore them.

And then, about a month earlier, something happened…

The inquisition about the Otherworlder summoning incident targeted not her sister, but her father. Even when the archbishop was executed in the old capital of Garm, Ashuna’s sister was still found innocent. At the very least, the inquisitors from the Faust had determined there was no proof that her sister had been involved in illegal activities.

“I don’t know what he got dragged into, but my poor father always was a fool… Honestly. With an older sister like mine, I always did wish I had a little sister of my own.”

Sounding uncharacteristically depressed, Ashuna muttered something that would probably send Momo into a rage if she heard it.

Resting her chin in her hands, she was wondering to herself whether she’d be able to ascertain Momo’s safety if she went to the church when something happened.

She sensed an enormous, almost venomous conjuring taking place.

“…!”

All the pores on her skin seemed to open to let out sweat. Her hairs stood on end, and goosebumps rose on her flesh. Ashuna’s sharp senses had detected a presence so intense, it almost made her nauseous, assaulting her with a grating discomfort she couldn’t ignore.

The closest sensation she could compare it to was what she felt in Grisarika Kingdom after she fell from the train while fighting Momo.

At the time, she sensed an indescribable wrongness. It was a deep disturbance, as if the world was being wrenched off course.

Her entire body shuddered as if a horrible monster was being born, ripping free of the planet’s womb.

It wasn’t just her imagination.

“If Manon Libelle is not stopped, I’ll turn into a monster, too. I’m giving you my testimony! You must arrest that girl before—ack?!”

The elderly man who was raging loudly about Manon Libelle suddenly trailed off.

A change was overtaking him. His elderly frame began to melt from the outside.

“Wh-what the…?” One of the knights murmured in horror.

It wasn’t just the old man. All the members of the Fourth who had been temporarily restrained here were undergoing the same transfiguration. The people in custody melted down to their bones and lost their shapes entirely.

As chaos broke out in the knights’ station, Ashuna turned her sharp gaze toward Libelle Castle.

“…That conjuring was coming from over there.”

The Princess Knight grabbed her sword and headed toward the battlefield.

This was not a joke.

When the Pure Concept that had burst out of Manon’s stomach revealed her horrifying identity, Menou shuddered.

“Pandemonium, creator of fog…!”

One of the Four Major Human Errors that had nearly destroyed the world, the legendary Pandemonium of the south, had been unleashed.

This was no bluff. That was all too clear with one look at her.

The little girl in front of Menou was a ghoulish monster that had been completely overtaken by a Pure Concept. It was no longer even accurate to call her human.

“Mmm? That doesn’t sound quite right. I am Pandæmonium—mass of monsters. The one in Ivory created the fog, not me. Don’t get us mixed up, okay?”

“…You mean the hero you were talking about before?”

“That’s right!”

The little girl made a circle with her thumb and index finger to signal a correct answer. Everything the little girl in the white dress, this Pandæmonium girl, said was news to Menou.

Menou had never heard of such a hero. The word “ivory” made her think of what had happened to her hometown, but that was only ten years ago. It couldn’t possibly be connected to the events that took place a thousand years in the past.

She looked at the little girl again.

If one entered the evil territory people called Pandemonium, one could never escape. As it turned out, this fog floating above the sea was actually a barrier that sealed away Pandæmonium, so Pandemonium was only the name of the site of the disaster’s aftermath.

Pandæmonium, the girl who’d been sealed inside the fog’s barrier, was the Major Human Error herself.

Just as she said, she was the very incarnation of evil. A monstrosity without a name.

Standing in front of this unfathomable threat, Menou gritted her teeth.

“Today is turning out to be an awful day.”

She thought she had cornered Manon, the mastermind behind the incidents in Libelle, but look at her now. Manon’s body had already disappeared without a trace. The monsters must have consumed her.

Beasts were still crawling from the rift Pandæmonium had created in space. There were more of them in a wider range of shapes and sizes than one might see even in the Wild Frontier.

“You think so? But the weather is so perfect—not a single white cloud in sight. Isn’t blue such a brilliant color? I’m sick of seeing ivory.”

Pandæmonium gazed up at the sky through the part of the wall that was broken from the fight with Manon. Then she stepped back abruptly.

“I mean, it’s been a thousand years. Even you don’t know about Ivory, and you’re wearing a priestess robe… But I can still feel their presence just a little. Isn’t that strange?”

Menou didn’t have time to answer her question.

As soon as Pandæmonium stepped back, the monsters moved forward. Without any corpses left, their next target was the living human in front of them.

One of them charged at Menou, and she buried her dagger in it.

Menou’s entire body was glowing with Guiding Light. Using the monster that had died instantly when she stabbed through its skull as a shield, she got low to the ground and darted around to the next monster’s back. It was difficult to tell from its bizarre body where its heart might be. She struck what appeared to be its neck with the hilt of the dagger and smashed its cervical vertebrae.

The summoned enemies weren’t particularly strong; in fact, Manon had put up more of a fight. At the very least, it wasn’t the swarm of powerful monsters from the legends.

The problem was their numbers. The rift in space through which the monsters came was still open, producing more of them in all shapes and sizes by the second.

Within moments, she had taken down the initial wave of monsters, yet their numbers showed no sign of slowing their growth.

Her top priority had to be closing the hole that opened up to the Concept Dimension of Original Sin.

Menou used Guiding Enhancement and her dagger crest to keep massacring the monsters as she began forming a scripture conjuring.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 12:1—Invoke [Strike the nail, strike the nail, all to give support.]

Guiding Light burst forth from Menou’s scripture and formed into innumerable giant nails. They were made of power, closer in form to the spiritual world than the physical one.

The spikes of light that formed around Menou sped forward as if struck by a hammer.

One after another, they pierced through the monsters, forming holes in their bodies, souls, and spirits. On top of that, more of the giant nails struck either end of the spatial rift and sealed it shut.

“Mm!” Pandæmonium exclaimed in surprise at the simultaneous destruction of the monsters and the rift. Wordlessly, Menou lunged toward her, grabbing and dragging her to the floor without leaving room for resistance.

Guiding Force: Connect—Dagger, Crest—Invoke [Guiding Thread]

If she was immortal, it only made sense to restrain her instead. Menou produced Guiding Thread from her dagger’s crest, held the girl’s wrists behind her back, and tied her so that she couldn’t move.

No ordinary human would be able to escape from these tight bonds. Even the members of the Fourth whose bodies were strengthened with monstrine hadn’t been able to get out of the tough, thin thread when it was wound around them.

Menou, however, wasn’t about to let her guard down. This was a Pure Concept given humanlike form. Restraining her with thread was hardly sufficient.

“Oh no, I can’t believe I was caught so easily…but you better watch your back!” Pandæmonium was dumbfounded for a moment, then glared boldly at Menou. “Defeating me isn’t enough to save the world! I’m nowhere near the other three! After all, I’m Pandæmonium, the weakest of the Four Major Human Errors…”

So this is the end of it?

As the restrained girl spouted what could only be interpreted as frustration at her own defeat, Menou began to feel a little hope—but that was quickly shattered into pieces.

“…But the evilest, too!”

That voice came from behind her.

A chill ran down her spine. Pandæmonium was right in front of her, still restrained by her thread. She was living, breathing, talking, and smiling.

Menou slowly turned to look at the source of the voice.

Pandæmonium was standing there, too.

There were now two of her.

“……” Menou stared back and forth between the two girls.

The only difference was…nothing. It wasn’t a matter of which was fake and which was real. Without a doubt, both were the real thing.

As Menou sat there frozen, Pandæmonium slid past her and walked toward herself.

“I can’t believe I got caught. I’ve got a long way to go.”

“I’m sorryyy. I can’t help it. I’m weak.”

“I knooow. I’m you, after all.”

The two identical girls pressed their foreheads together, acting overjoyed at their reunion. They put their hands together and wrapped their arms around each other like twins expressing sisterly love.

This, however, was anything but a heartwarming scene of familial affection.

There was the sharp crack of bones breaking.

One of the Pandæmoniums had come closer to the other one’s collarbone. Just seconds after chatting happily with her other self, she wrapped both hands around her throat and snapped her skinny neck.

The Pandæmonium whose neck had been broken fell dead and melted away. The other, upon killing her own self, turned back toward Menou with a smile.

“Good job with the warm-up match, lady.”

There was nothing Menou could say.

Pandæmonium was the progenitor of all monsters and demons.

The Pure Concept of Evil, which had created the Concept of Original Sin that spread harm throughout the world.

Her thoughts turned into demons and created Original Sin, and her flesh and blood became monsters and scattered all over the world. Original Sin had brought about the destruction of a prosperous civilization a thousand years ago. The creator of conjurings that could destroy humanity smiled, looking innocent.

At this point, any ordinary priestess or knight would have lost all hope and gone mad.

But Menou didn’t waver. Her eyes were still filled with quiet determination as she pointed her dagger.

“You’re the one who tempted Manon into those evil deeds, aren’t you?”

“Mm! That’s a mean way to say it. ‘Tempted’ makes it sound like it wasn’t what she wanted to do of her own free will! I don’t think it’s very nice to write off the feelings of someone who worked so hard and worried so much about her place in life.”

Pandæmonium didn’t look guilty. In fact, she took on a scolding tone and wagged her finger admonishingly.

“I helped her, you know? I reached out a helping hand so she could live a better life. By the end, she knew exactly what she wanted to do. I think it was definitely a happy way to go.” The little girl smiled. “Sure, that helping hand was an evil one, but I am Evil. When people give in to the darkness, that’s where I come in. She said it herself, didn’t she? She turned to the darkness, and so I got into her. That’s all there is to it.”

“And just reaching out a helping hand was enough to satisfy you?” Menou asked. “I saw the Guiding vessel used to create the monstrine, so I know it was your blood that was used to make those red pills. By having them consume a part of you, you were able to get into other people and erode them from the inside, using those who took the drug as sacrifices to revive yourself. The entire monstrine affair was all a ruse to get sacrifices for you, wasn’t it?”

“You’re half right and half wrong. It’s not that I wanted to be revived—I just wanted to do a movie.”

“Do a movie…?”

“Uh-huh.”

Menou couldn’t conceal her confusion. The girl’s words were so unusual that it was hard to assess them properly.

“I told you, remember? My hobbies are singing, dancing, and watching movies! But this world doesn’t have movies, you know? The church keeps all the conjurings for recording images and sounds to themselves. That means no entertainment! This planet is just so boring, so I decided to do the kind of movie I’ve been dying to see.”

Do a movie?

Menou understood the basic concept of the medium of film. As an Executioner, she was thoroughly educated on knowledge of a country called Japan, which didn’t exist here.

But movies were for watching. She didn’t understand how one could “do” a movie.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s simple! Basically, I wanted to make a monster disaster happen in this port city, like from a movie. I was hoping to spread monstrine and cause an epidemic of sorts…but you guys got in the way of that. So instead, I cast you as the heroine of the monster movie. You just have to run away desperately from me, the big scary monster,” the little girl said with the absolute confidence that she was the predator.

Menou furrowed her brow. Manon’s desire to become taboo was strange enough, but Pandæmonium’s motivations were even more impossible to fathom.

“I don’t think I understand. Turning the people of this city into monsters, causing chaos, trying to chase me around… How do you benefit from all this, exactly?”

“Benefit?” Pandæmonium blinked her big, round eyes. Her expression was that of a little girl who’s been asked a confusing question by an adult. “I don’t benefit from it, really. I don’t care what you do, after all. Whether you live or die, the fate of one measly human doesn’t matter to me. So how would I benefit from this?”

The Human Error that had once sunk the world into terror looked at Menou as if she didn’t matter. Then she went on with a self-satisfied expression.

“Honestly, lady… You don’t think you’re some super-important person who the world can’t go on without, do you? Ah, or do you think every single human life is unique and precious? That would be an even bigger mistake.”

She spoke as if scolding a child who’s grown too big for their britches.

“Listen—it’s watching humans struggle desperately that’s the fun part. So whether that results in the person living or dying doesn’t matter. Don’t you get it? What’s important is the process! It’s watching people put their lives on the line! Seeing them struggle for their lives is super fun!!” The girl held out both hands, her eyes glittering.

She didn’t seem to feel a hint of compassion for humans. It was as if she was watching the world from the other side of a screen. The way she spoke like a celestial body looking down upon humanity was truly terrifying.

“There’s no benefit. I’m just starved for entertainment. I wanna watch a movie with no director, where the whole cast is improvising, and where I get to laugh my head off. It’s just a game for me, but you humans are putting your lives on the line, so it’s really fun to watch! That girl, um… I forget her name, but her, too. It’s the way she risked her life that made it worth seeing her die, you know?”

What exactly did she think humans were? Pandæmonium was the one who tempted Manon and lent her power, yet she couldn’t even remember her name, laughing that her life was nothing more than a source of amusement.

“Mmm, don’t get mad, okay? That’s just what B movies are like.”

As Menou seethed silently, Pandæmonium looked utterly unapologetic.

“See, there’s gotta be a sudden disaster with no warning where tons of people die, and ooonce in a while, all the protagonists die, too, humanity is destroyed, and it ends in a victory for some grotesque monsters. You know, the kind of unsatisfying ending where you wonder what the point of the movie was. There’s no catharsis or closure, just self-satisfaction for whoever made it. That kind of movie is a real gem that defies the meaning of entertainment, forcing the unfairness of reality on the audience.”

The little girl’s attitude was unchanged in spite of Menou’s obvious rage. She twined her hands behind her back and carried on explaining her pet theory.

“But I think that’s part of what makes a true monster movie. Big, giant monsters, appearing in huge numbers without any warning, that are way too strong for humans to beat! Monsters are supposed to be unfair! That’s just reality! That’s why people want a monster big enough to destroy reality itself!”

Pandæmonium stepped on top of a monster, held her hands out wide, and grinned. “Because reality, just like a monster, doesn’t care what you want. Get it?”

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [Ghosts are real, too!]

Spirit bodies dragged themselves out of the monsters’ corpses and stood in the world as ghosts.

“Go ahead! Try to entertain me, lady!”

“…I wish you wouldn’t underestimate me.”

The ghost monsters charged at Menou. Having shed the yokes of their physical forms, they could no longer be considered living beings, but they were trying to bite directly into Menou’s spirit.

These imaginary life-forms weren’t affected by most physical attacks, as they were only being solidified in the world by Guiding Force. They would be incredibly difficult to deal with for any human who could only use Guiding Enhancement.

But for Menou, they were no problem.

While souls without vessels could pass right through physical interference, they were that much weaker to the power in conjurings.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 9:3—Invoke [Know the hiding places of the wicked, and shine light upon them.]

The scripture conjuring mowed down the spirit bodies. The ghosts dissipated without any way to resist.

Menou glared at the little girl who was the cause of it all.

There were always conditions for making sacrifices and using living things as materials. Even a master of Pure Concepts couldn’t offer up other people as sacrifices and use them as materials without any kind of process. Pandæmonium’s conjurings were certainly grotesque, but they weren’t impossible to counter.

The only question was how to destroy her.

“Pandæmonium. If I stop you, it will put an end to everything.”

“Then try and stop me.” Pandæmonium’s eyes glinted red.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [The rats go marching.]

The heaps of monster corpses melted into the ground.

In the next moment, there was a tremor. Something rumbled underground.

Feeling the ground beneath her quake, Menou activated Guiding Enhancement and leaped upward. Just as she sprang away, massive cracks formed in the floor of the dance hall.

“I am the lord of the monsters that lurk eternally in the dark. If you really think you can stop a beast like me, go ahead and try.”

A swarm of ratlike monsters burst out from the ground.

The monster corpses that had been offered as sacrifices had made contact with the earthen vein belowground, absorbed power, and been reformed with a sort of pseudo-soul and spirit.

They exploded like a geyser. The monsters gnawed through the floor, cracked the ground, and charged at Menou like an avalanche.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 2:5—Invoke [Rejoice, for the wall that surrounds a pious flock of sheep shall never crumble.]

As the giant rats bared their teeth and swarmed forward, they were repelled by the barrier Menou conjured.

“Mmm, a pseudo-church! How annoying!”

Guiding Force: Connect—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Invoke [Catch a monster by the toe.]

Pandæmonium’s eyes glowed red again. Judging by the construction, all Menou could tell was that it wasn’t going to be a sacrificial summoning this time.

The small girl’s body was bathed in Guiding Light. It was composed of power from Original Sin, creating a different effect from Guiding Enhancement.

As Menou cautiously wondered what she was doing now, Pandæmonium held out her left hand, still glowing red.

One of the summoned monsters chomped down on her slender arm. Then another.

Menou’s eyes widened. Pandæmonium’s left arm was being devoured while she was still alive.

The rat monsters that had eaten the girl’s arm swelled up in size. Pandæmonium had turned her own flesh into a strengthening agent and fed it to the monsters.

With their muscles swollen to the point that their skin was bulging out, the rats began to attack again, but they were still blocked by the barrier.

“Oh dear, one wasn’t enough? Here’s another, then.”

Without hesitation, she dangled out her right leg with a smile.

In an instant, the girl’s skinny leg was devoured to nothing, and the monsters grew even larger. The sudden growth nearly split their skin open, and a new pair of legs sprouted from their backs. Heedless of the destruction from their own extreme enhancements, the rat monsters gnawed frantically at Menou’s barrier.

“……!”

The tactic was so grotesque, it was nauseating to watch. Pandæmonium’s conjurings came with such horrific methods that no sane person would be able to use them. Did she not experience pain, or did she just see it as the last humanlike feeling left to her? Just watching her recklessly inflicting self-harm to invoke one conjuring after the next was enough to threaten one’s sanity.

But then again, Menou had no intention of just standing there and watching.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 3:1—Invoke [And the oncoming enemy did hear the tolling of the bell.]

Still maintaining the wall, she invoked an attack conjuring.

A bell made of light formed directly above Menou. The rat monsters writhed in pain at the wrenching peals of power.

The bell rang out in every direction. A massive wave fanned from the conjuring in a wide circle, making it nigh impossible to flee. The monsters trying to gnaw through the wall of light flipped on their backs and kicked their legs in agony.

The sound didn’t seem to reach Pandæmonium, however. On a second look, it was definitely causing some damage. Each time the power rang out, Pandæmonium’s small frame began to break, and blood spurted out of different parts of her body.

And yet, she didn’t seem at all concerned about her own injuries. She smiled blithely as she watched the monsters she’d summoned struggle.

Crimson light covered the girl’s body. With Guiding Enhancement strengthening her, Pandæmonium acted unaffected by the sound of the bell as she plucked off her remaining leg.

“Here you go. Number three.”

She shoved her blood-dripping leg into the mouth of one of the writhing monsters.

At this point, the surviving beasts barely even resembled rats. They had grown new limbs at random all over their bodies. Their broken pelts had been shed, replaced by an armor of hardened muscle fibers. Their overgrown front teeth had turned into sharp blades, slicing their own lower jaws in two.

These powered-up monsters began regrouping, pushing against the deafening peals of the bell. Their bodies, originally the size of a fist, had swelled up to that of a large dog. Their countless limbs squirmed and clung to the outer wall of the pseudo-church, and they struck against it with their long, sharp front teeth, trying to chew through.

By now, they were past the point of excitement into a nearly deranged rampage. They crashed into the wall wildly, one after the other, with new monsters crushing the previous ones from behind. Stomping and squashing their own comrades, then being stomped and squashed themselves, they charged against the wall in waves.

Eventually, their insane assault began to create cracks in it.

But Menou remained calm.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 8:12—Invoke [Kneel before the gate, for it is the path to the Lord.]

Following the outer wall of the church and the bell tower, a new wall formed with a main gate. In the meantime, the monstrous rats had swarmed over the faint cracks and began trying to expand the hole with their front teeth. The monsters’ blood and sinew seeped toward the wall of light like goo.

Just before it got inside, the gate of light opened.

The swarm of monsters let out a screech.

The newly opened gate was producing a powerful inward pull. The monsters that had set foot within the wall were sucked toward it despite their grabbing teeth and crushed against the inner wall.

This multi-step conjuring had created the full form of a church. As Menou constructed and sustained all this with a grimace, the little girl with only one arm left looked on with a smirk.

“A triple invocation of a scripture conjuring. That’s very impressive… But you don’t have very much Guiding Force, do you?”

She’d seen through her.

After the long fight with Manon, Menou had invoked several of these already. Her flesh and spirit aside, Menou’s soul was reaching the limit of power it could provide. Her Guiding Force was about to run dry.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [The big tall giant swings its arm.]

Pandæmonium’s right arm swelled up.

Rewriting the structure of the human body, the arm stretched out like rubber and struck. Packing one powerful punch, the enormous arm broke through the cracked wall of light and sped toward Menou.

She was so focused on maintaining her conjuring that she couldn’t dodge it.

“Ngh!”

Menou’s body buckled and was flung upward. With her concentration completely ruined, the bell and gate vanished into thin air. The monsters that had been trapped by the structure were let loose.

This is bad. An alert went off in Menou’s mind. Pandæmonium’s arm and the rat monsters—she had to deal with both, or she’d die.

A monster leaped straight toward her, its mouth wide open. Pandæmonium’s arm swept toward her from above, swinging down to try and crush Menou’s skull…until the arm was lopped clean off.

“Mmm!” Pandæmonium’s round eyes widened.

Like a thunderclap, a thrown sword had cut through Pandæmonium’s arm and landed stabbed into the ground.

It was a magnificent sword with an elaborate crest on the hilt. Moments later, the person who had thrown it landed on the scene. She grabbed the hilt and swung it to stop the front teeth of the rat monsters.

The crest on the hilt glowed vividly.

Guiding Force: Connect—Royal Sword, Crest—Invoke [Flameburst]

Fire blasted into the rat monsters’ wide-open mouths.

“When I saw those people from the Fourth melting, I went running toward the source of the strangeness, but this certainly isn’t what I expected.”

As the monsters scattered, a voice so confident it bordered on arrogance rang out.

Her red-tinged golden hair fluttered, and her bared back looked so gallant as to be downright beautiful.

“You…”

“Nice to meet you, priestess…at least, let’s just say this is the first time we’ve met, shall we?”

The woman who had rescued Menou from peril hefted her sword and grinned.

“I’m Ashuna Grisarika.”

The wild tomboy of the Grisarika Kingdom, the Princess Knight, had arrived.

Pandæmonium’s arm hit the ground with a thud.

Severed from her body, it disintegrated into dust and fell away. Having finally lost all four limbs, Pandæmonium shook her head in irritation.

“Mmm, mmm… Now I’ve got no limbs left. It’s too bad I can’t even greet this new visitor properly.”

This seemed like a major underreaction to having no limbs. Ashuna glared at the bizarre creature known as Pandæmonium as she addressed Menou.

“Looks like you’re fighting another absurdly difficult opponent…but what in the world is that disturbing thing? Just looking at it gives me the creeps.”

“That’s Pandæmonium, one of the Four Major Human Errors.”

“Oh-ho.” Even Ashuna looked startled by Menou’s response. “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s just about the worst villain you could meet.”

To her eternal credit, Ashuna’s lips quickly lifted into a grin.

“Your Highness, did you say the members of the Fourth melted?”

“That I did.”

“Then that must be Pandæmonium’s upper limit.” Menou had figured out the driving force behind Pandæmonium’s conjurings. “She satisfies the sacrificial requirements by eroding the structure of people who have ingested a certain amount of monstrine. The bodies, spirits, and souls of the Fourth, likely around a hundred people—she used their life force to power her Original Sin Conjuring.”

“I see. So we just have to kill her a hundred times, eh? That makes things nice and simple.”

A hundred times was probably an exaggeration. Pandæmonium had already drained some of that life force by summoning monsters and replacing her own body. More importantly, since she could still effectively be immortal by using her own body as a sacrifice to revive herself, it didn’t change the fact that she was impossible to kill.

But if they chipped away the strength she’d gotten from those sacrifices, then she wouldn’t be able to use any more power but her own. Since Original Sin Conjurings required sacrifices, their biggest weakness was that they couldn’t even be invoked without one.

Pandæmonium was a powerful opponent, but as Menou had assassinated many users of Pure Concepts before, she was far from being completely outmatched. She still had her scripture, too, unlike in the battle against Orwell. She could continue fighting.

Ashuna seemed to understand the situation, too. She’d seen through to the heart of the matter without asking any unnecessary questions.

“Let’s get down to it, then.”

“We can settle this with one blow. There’s something I’d like you to do, Your Highness. Conveniently enough, we’ve already made a hole.”

“Oh-ho?”

There was a glint of understanding in Ashuna’s eyes.

The cracks in the floor around them ran all the way through the castle’s foundation deep underground. This was where the summoned rat monsters had crawled out from.

So where did they lead?

“Just to be clear: Normally, people can’t control more power than their own inner stores of Guiding Force. Even if we draw out the earthen vein, it doesn’t seem like you’d have the capacity to do much with it. What do you think?”

Her voice was laden with both challenge and anticipation. Ashuna knew that Menou’s ability to manipulate Guiding Force was exceptional. But it was common sense that a person’s physical ability to control power was innately limited. An individual could only control as much Guiding Force as they had in their souls.

Ashuna’s tone, however, hinted that she suspected the person in front of her might be able to challenge that rule.

Menou responded without hesitation. “I can do it.”

When she was affected by a Human Error at a young age, Menou’s body, soul, and spirit were all blanched almost completely white. Her sense of the boundary between herself and the outside world virtually disappeared, which had the effect of allowing her to control power outside of herself as naturally as her own. Power had to be regulated by the owner’s spirit or there would be recoil, but when it came to using it without a spirit or soul, Menou could control it far past normal limits as long as she could touch it.

It was a property unique to a blanched-white soul—to no one in the world but Menou.

“My inner capacity for Guiding Force may be ordinary for a priestess…but the upper limit for the Guiding Force I can control absolutely outclasses yours.”

Ashuna gulped. “Well, that’s certainly intriguing. Let’s see it, then.”

The princess drew her sword, pointed the tip down toward the ground, and charged its crest with power.

Guiding Force: Connect—Royal Sword, Crest—Invoke [Expansion]

The sword grew, stretching down toward the bottom of the cracks—all the way to the depths of the earth, where the earthen vein flowed.

It was no coincidence. Pandæmonium had interfered with the earthen vein to create the rat monsters in the first place. Sharp-eyed as ever, Menou had realized this and called on Ashuna to utilize it.

The long, large sword created by the conjuring made contact with the earthen vein. They had a connection.

“Here we go. It’s all yours!”

Guiding Force: Connect (via Slash Expansion)—Earthen Vein [Power]—Invoke [Guiding Force Manipulation]

The earthen vein bent to her will.

Magnificent, chaotic, and utterly dependable. The power that Ashuna had twisted out of shape with her direct Guiding Force manipulation hit Menou head-on.

Any ordinary person would have undoubtedly been blown away. It was like being struck by a flash flood. Without the reinforced defenses of Guiding Enhancement, the torrent could have damaged her body, spirit, and even her soul.

Menou quietly closed her eyes and entrusted herself to the power.

Instead of controlling it, she was accepting it as part of herself. Its flow permeated through Menou. Her body and soul became one with the power of the earthen vein, and Menou’s spirit took hold over its flow.

As its power gushed upward, it took on a clear purpose and stretched toward the sky.

This was a form of cooperation unlike when Menou connected directly with Akari’s Guiding Force and drew it out in Garm. Nor was it the same as ceremonial conjurings in which multiple people worked together to interfere with the earthen vein from the outside.

Menou was entering the earthen vein, assimilating into it.

It was a form of manipulation that far exceeded the limits of an individual, and it was only possible for Menou, who had lost the boundary between herself and the rest of the world.

“Ha! That’s incredible.” Ashuna looked on in admiration at Menou’s technique.

It was a beauty to behold.

Usually, if part of the earthen vein were to burst out of the ground, it would diffuse into its surroundings. There was normally no way to control this sheer power, but now it was being concentrated and shooting into the air, from the ground to the sky. Even the spacious dance hall was too small to contain it. Its power pierced through the ceiling, destroyed part of the castle easily, and turned what was once indoors into the outdoors as it followed the will of Menou’s spirit.

In moments, a pillar of Guiding Force had formed, connecting the earthen vein to the heavenly vein.

“Mmm!”

An aorta that linked heaven and earth. Pandæmonium gazed up at Menou, floating in the center of the pulsing pillar of Guiding Light, with a strangely wistful expression.

“…She does remind me a bit of Ivory.”

Those words didn’t reach Menou, who was in a state of extreme focus.

Within the pillar of light, she opened her eyes. Using the power she controlled as part of her own self, she began to construct a scripture conjuring.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 1:2, Full Passage—Invoke [Beyond the mountains, there was nothing to be found in the plains below. Nothing but a wasteland stretching out forever. Morning, afternoon, and night; there was no change to the withered plains. The exhausted people were at a loss. Boom. Boom. An echo. The people looked upward to see a woman. The people were confused. The woman said nothing. Her mouth closed, she raised her arm and struck with the hammer. They gathered around her in wonder. All eyes were focused on the woman. She raised her arm again. In order to do what must be done: Drive in the stake and make known the ground where all shall begin.]

It was a pseudo-church constructed using the earthen and heavenly veins.

This was the very same conjuring that was used to assassinate the Pure Concept that once destroyed Menou’s hometown. The former Archbishop Orwell had constructed this extremely complex scripture conjuring on her own. This time, Menou was expanding its scale even further.

The barrier swelled outward, forming a majestic holy church large and powerful enough to cover the entire island.

“Mm-mm, amazing. You’ve got me beat in terms of effort—gggh!”

Pandæmonium’s gleeful voice suddenly faltered.

She was being pinned down by a force so strong that she couldn’t even complete her casual comment.

The bell rang out over and over, solidifying the binding barrier. A space formed around the girl that prevented her from moving an inch, crucifying her in the empty air.

The pseudo-church barrier that bound the body, soul, and spirit was one of the most powerful conjurings in the scripture. Since it drew Guiding Force from the earthen vein and connected to the heavenly vein in an endless cycle, it was permanently rooted in place here.

Pandæmonium was silent now. It would be impossible for the little girl to move an eyelash under the crushing weight of all that power, let alone open her mouth.

“That’s it, then? For one of the Four Major Human Errors, that was surprisingly easy… I suppose your conjuring was just that incredible.”

“She was a powerful foe. To be honest, the fact that there weren’t too many sacrifices definitely helped.”

Menou and Ashuna left the castle and walked toward the road that led off the island.

Their expressions were bright as they spoke lightly to each other. They had just defeated one of the legendary Four Major Human Errors after an incredibly tough battle. Neither of them was the type to blithely celebrate a victory, but they were certainly enjoying the sense of satisfaction.

A considerable amount of Libelle Castle had been destroyed by the blast of the earthen vein. The entire place might even need to be demolished.

“All I have to do now is leave the island long enough to strengthen the barrier. I’ll consult with the pastor about what to do with Pandæmonium from there, but you were an enormous help.”

“Oh, don’t mention it… By the way, er, you know.” Uncharacteristically, Ashuna mumbled for a moment before asking, “Is Momo all right?”

That was unexpected.

Even beyond the fact that she had somehow deduced that Menou and Momo were connected, it was Ashuna’s attitude that surprised Menou the most. She wasn’t interrogating or making demands. In that moment, she was simply worried for Momo’s well-being.

Menou wondered for a moment if she should feign ignorance, then wryly decided there was no point in that now.

“She’s fine. She was poisoned and collapsed, but she’s in the church, resting—”

Something cut their conversation short.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [Koi replica, up above the world so high.]

The ground burst open.

Menou and Ashuna were thrown into the air by a sudden force from beneath their feet. The pseudo-church constructed from Guiding Force was blown into pieces. What just happened? Even as they were flung upward, the pair quickly looked around, but what they saw was difficult to believe.

“…Huh?”

“What in the…?!”

It wasn’t just the barrier that had been broken. The two hardened warriors wouldn’t have been so alarmed by such a simple sight.

A giant monster had appeared and blown away the entire island that Menou had turned into holy ground.

Once she made it to safety, Akari was escorted to a room in the church.

Sicilia was fully aware that Akari had a Pure Concept, so she took great pains to ensure Akari wasn’t agitated in any way.

Thus, Akari, still in the same state of full awareness, sat in the room and waited.

“Maaan… Menou is just so darn cool…”

It had been a fairly long time since this Akari had gotten even a small amount of interaction with Menou. She’d missed her so much that she started crying despite herself. I hope Menou didn’t find that too suspicious…, she worried.

This incident in Libelle was full of twists and turns. As long as Menou was safe, that was all right, but these uncertain events might have an effect on the future.

Looking out the window, Akari peered at the island.

“Well, I don’t really care that Momo is bedridden ’cause of poison, but… What was all that about anyway?”

Was the distribution of that unfamiliar substance Manon Libelle called “monstrine” the source of all this strangeness? Akari heaved a sigh, frustrated that things had ended before she got to the bottom of any of it.

Then, suddenly, Libelle Island exploded.

“Huh?” Akari was struck speechless by the sudden, seemingly impossible sight.

Seconds after she witnessed this insanity, there was a thunderous roar and a massive tremor that rocked the ground and Akari with it.

Libelle Island had been destroyed by a bizarre, elongated giant monster. Its head was smooth and flat like a fish, but most of the rest of its body was a frightful mess of strange tubes. It was so massive that Akari couldn’t see its entire frame even from the window of the church, which overlooked the island.

An indescribably massive monster had broken through the center of the small island, breaking it into clods of earth.

As the monster appeared, it sent huge rocks and clouds of dust flying everywhere, tremors shaking the earth. The slightest movement of the summoned monster created waves in the ocean, flipping over ships that were moored in the harbor.

If the remnants of the pseudo-church Menou had created hadn’t dulled the momentum of the waves and bounced back the fragments of the island, the city of Libelle would have undoubtedly taken massive damage.

Even then, it wasn’t enough to prevent any harm entirely.

Boulders rained down on the harbor.

These were the remains of an island, even if it was a small one. The impact created more tremors, and several houses collapsed in Akari’s range of vision alone.

Her mind had gone blank. What had just happened? She didn’t understand.

“What is that…?”

This was far too different from anything that had ever happened before. Even Akari had never seen an island blown to pieces. There had been other occasions when things happened that Akari wasn’t familiar with, but this was on far too large a scale.

But she quickly came back to her senses.

Menou had been in Libelle Castle. And now it had been destroyed without a trace.

“Menou is—”

“You can’t.”

She was about to go investigate whether Menou was safe when someone spoke to her.

Akari froze and turned to see a little girl with elegant features and a simple white dress. She entered Akari’s room, looking completely unfazed by the sudden events.

“You can’t go. If you go over there, it won’t be any fun at all. Why don’t you play with me here instead?”

Akari’s eyes snapped wide open. She raised her hand in the shape of a gun, Guiding Light surrounding her index finger.

It was her instincts, not logic, that were screaming a warning.

It’s her.

She was the fuel of the violence that Manon Libelle would never have been able to commit on her own. She was the appearance of the monster that blew up an entire island. All of the unthinkably large-scale taboos that were occurring in this city—and the girl in front of her was the source of it all.

“Who are you? …No, wait. What are you?”

“Mm? Maybe I should introduce myself.”

The girl’s lips pouted, and her eyes flared with red light. Realizing she was going to use a conjuring, Akari unleashed the Guiding Light on her fingertip as well.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [I’ve got two oddities in my pocket.]

Guiding Force: Connect—Improper Attachment, Pure Concept [Time]—Invoke [Suspension]

Both of Pandæmonium’s arms melted away.

At the same time, she was struck by the Guiding Light that fired from Akari’s finger. The girl was frozen in time, unable to move a hair. She had been about to use some kind of conjuring, but Akari assumed she was incapacitated now and lowered her finger.

Pandæmonium was a completely unknown being to Akari. They had never met before…which was why she was caught by surprise when two twisted arms popped out of her skirt pocket.

“Huh?!” Akari’s exclamation of surprise was cut off when both arms wrapped around her throat.

Pandæmonium had used her arms as a sacrifice to summon two demon arms instead. The unlikely pair of arms that had emerged from Akari’s pocket tightened their hold around her neck.

“Nn…gh…”

Tears welled up in her eyes from the force around her throat as she gasped for oxygen.

The arms lifting Akari off the ground had several mouths. They moved their lips and perfect teeth in unison, speaking in the voice of the girl.

“Do you understand now, I hope? I’m Evil.”

The voice sounded far away to Akari’s ears. Her vision was growing hazy. This wasn’t good. Akari forced herself to stay conscious and sent Guiding Light to her fingertip.

Guiding Force: Connect—Improper Attachment, Pure Concept [Time]—Invoke [Fracture]

The arms were ripped away by fractures in the fabric of space-time.

Losing her support, Akari dropped to the floor, too.

She was freed from the twisted arms, but to use other conjurings, Akari had been forced to release the Suspension on Pandæmonium. The torn-up arms landed palm-first on the floor and nimbly used their fingers to walk over to her. Then they hopped into the air and attached to the shoulders of the girl who was now unfrozen in time.

It was so grotesque as to be almost comical. Akari put a hand to her injured neck and coughed repeatedly.

This introduction had revealed the girl’s identity more than any explanation could.

A Human Error: the final form of an Otherworlder.

“Evil, you said? I don’t know how you showed up, but why are you getting in my way?”

“Oh? Well, if you went over there, you’d ruin all the fun. That’d mess up the whole point of the movie, don’t you think?”

Why was this girl talking about movies? Akari frowned. But if the cause of the irregularities was right in front of her, then that made things simple.

“If you’re the one who called that thing, then all I have to do is beat you.”

If she defeated this being, everything would be put back on course. There would be no more unexpected developments.

Pandæmonium widened her eyes in an overdramatic show of shock.

“Mm! Mm-mm-mm! Beat me? You really think you can do that somehow?” Pandæmonium giggled and spread her arms open, inviting Akari to attack. “I know I’m weak, but you’re even weaker! Don’t you even know that, you silly Time person? You’re just a lost one who doesn’t know aaanything. Let’s get started, shall we? We’ll have our own fun little battle right here!”

Menou and Akari.

As each of them stood in separate places, they were confronted by the exact same little girl.

Their eyes locked for a moment in midair.

Menou was exchanging looks with a massive eye so large that it felt like it could swallow her whole. The enormous eyeball shifted, tracing Menou’s parabolic arc through the air.

She could clearly see herself reflected in the crystalline lens of the eye. The monster’s eyeball alone was bigger than Menou was tall. The sense of unreality made Menou’s head spin.

Then the monster’s eyeball blinked.

Menou came back to her senses as if released from sleep paralysis.

The creature that had burst out from the island was a dreadnought-class monster so enormous it seemed like nothing but a wall from up close. The shock waves from its emergence had sent Menou and Ashuna flying. The giant eyeball following Menou was one of several on its bizarre body.

Even as she sailed through the air, Menou searched for Ashuna.

If she hit the ground from here, she could land unharmed with the help of Guiding Enhancement and the proper posture, but it would be far more difficult if she fell into the ocean. With the wild waves thrashing as they were, she could easily get pulled under by the current and drown. This went for both of them.

As she spun, she caught a flash of golden hair. She lost sight of it again in an instant, but one glimpse of her location was all Menou needed.

Guiding Force: Connect—Dagger, Crest—Invoke [Guiding Thread]

Forming thread out of Guiding Force, Menou threw it to Ashuna.

“Your Highness!”

“Got it!”

Sensing her plan immediately, Ashuna caught the dagger and yanked on it to pull Menou in. The two of them practically crashed into each other. Ashuna caught Menou in her arms and surrounded herself with the light of Guiding Enhancement.

The pair had already hit the top of their parabolic arc and begun their descent. Leaving Ashuna to take care of the landing, Menou charged her dagger with power again in a flash.

Guiding Force: Connect—Dagger, Crest—Invoke [Gale]

The gust of wind from the dagger slowed the speed of their descent.

Menou’s crest conjuring wasn’t strong enough to make both of them float. For the time being, they glided through the air, aiming for solid ground.

Once they landed, Menou steadied herself and looked up at the massive monster.

It was so enormous, her breath caught.

She supposed she could understand that the enemy had broken her pseudo-church barrier. This was one of the legendary Human Errors, after all. Their strength was simply on another level. It might be possible for her to break even a barrier using the earthen vein with sheer brute strength.

However, she could never have begun to imagine that her opponent would destroy the entire island in order to break out of the pseudo-church.

The giant monster that had ripped through Menou’s barrier and physically crushed an entire island just by coming into existence split open—no, it had opened its mouth, so massive that it looked like it had split in two. The monster’s maw made up more than half of its body, so opening it gave the illusion that its body was breaking in half.

The towering beast twisted back and forth.

Pandæmonium jumped down from atop its head, which was so far up, one would have to crane to look at it. Spinning elegantly through the air, she landed on her feet. Without any Guiding Enhancement, the little girl’s slender legs couldn’t handle the impact; her lower body was crushed, and the resultant momentum sent her head smashing into the ground, where it splattered like a tomato.

Even Ashuna had to stare in shock at such a strange and nonsensical suicide, but it meant nothing at all.

“Peekaboo!” Pandæmonium came flying out of her own pulpy corpse like a grotesque jack-in-the-box.

Her face stiffening, Ashuna took a defensive stance. The girl responded to her stare by twirling around in a little dance, spinning and posing as if to show herself off.

Witnessing Pandæmonium’s immortality for the first time, Ashuna grimaced.

“Ah-ha-ha, did I getcha?”

“I see… So this is a Human Error. I’ve never seen one in person before, but they’re certainly animals.”

“Mm, that’s mean. You would call a weak little girl like me an animal? Excuse you! I’m a very cute monster!”

Pandæmonium, who had died for the sole purpose of surprising Ashuna, smiled brightly.

“So what’s this about ‘strengthening the barrier’?”

Her cruel yet childlike voice rattled Menou’s eardrums.

“This one got super, super strong by devouring its own kind for aaages. It’s a liiiittle different from the newborns you fought before.”

The shock waves from the giant monster’s appearance were still reverberating. Pandæmonium twirled to the background music of the raging waves and the screams in the city.

The monsters Menou had just barely managed to deal with earlier were only “newborns.”

“We had nothing but time, after all. In the white fog, it was just an endless, poisonous loneliness.”

That monster was the sole survivor of the thousand-year struggle among monsters, the one that had devoured the southern islands that were sealed in the Ivory fog with Pandæmonium.

And now, it had set its sights on the city of Libelle. This monster was too large to even take notice of individuals like Menou and Ashuna. With just one bite, it could destroy half the city and put a permanent dent in the continent. That was the scale of this horrific foe.

“So…what do we do?” Ashuna looked at Menou.

The giant monster was one thing, but its summoner, Pandæmonium, was now defenseless. By all appearances, at least, she looked as if she could be easily taken down with a tackle. The girl seemed prepared to be captured at any moment.

In reality, hurting Pandæmonium would be simple. From their short battle, Menou knew that Pandæmonium had no strategies for battle. The monsters she produced, too, generally just lashed out with no sense of intelligence. They seemed to be under Pandæmonium’s command, but she didn’t issue any sort of orders to them. In theory, she had plenty of weaknesses.

But what was the point?

She was capable of summoning herself by sacrificing her own dead body. In essence, that meant she could technically summon infinite monsters, too.

They couldn’t kill her, had no way to seal her, and she would never run out of resources.

Truly, she had the power to exterminate humanity and destroy the entire world.

Menou took a deep breath. “We don’t need to do anything.”

“What?”

As Ashuna stared at Menou in confusion, the giant monster that had grown up sealed in the horrific fog lunged forward to take a bite out of the continent.

Menou didn’t move. It wasn’t that she couldn’t—she simply predicted there was no need to do anything about the monster.

Her suspicion was right.

A fog appeared.

It billowed out from empty space and coiled around the monster, clinging to it heavily and limiting its movements. Shockingly enough, there were the cracking sounds of the massive monster caving in under the pressure of the fog.

Covering the monster completely, it flowed from the sea to the land, reaching the place where Menou and company stood.

“Mm! I guess I can’t bring any friends out of there yet after all. This one is weak, but still one of my favorites… I guess it’ll take a while before the fog connects all the way here.”

Looking at everything Pandæmonium had said thus far, Menou’s thoughts connected to something else.

Just as she thought, the girl in front of them wasn’t their biggest problem.

“Pandæmonium.”

“What is it, lady?”

“You’re not the real one, are you?”

Menou’s sudden statement made Pandæmonium pause for the first time.

She blinked a few times, then finally sighed.

“…Mm.” She smiled sweetly. “What gave it away, I wonder?”

“I knew it.”

Menou had vaguely suspected for a while now. The monsters that Pandæmonium summoned were far from strong.

And the fog that surrounded the monster cemented her theory.

“If your monster that’s existed for a thousand years is still trapped by the fog, there’s no way you could have escaped the fog completely. It’s like you said—even you yourself are a ‘newborn’ Pandæmonium, aren’t you?”

The girl had said she summoned that giant monster out of the fog. If the barrier had really weakened enough for Pandæmonium herself to escape, then there was no way it should still be able to hold a monster that served her.

In other words, the girl in front of her was just an offshoot cut from the real Pandæmonium, who was still sealed in the fog.

“The real you is in the fog. I’m sure you were testing it just now, too, but…the monsters in the fog are attached to the real Pandæmonium in the end. This version of you can’t control them.”

“Mm-hmm! I’m just a hand puppet, after all. I just barely managed to get my pinky finger out.”

Her pinky finger.

This girl who had summoned massive amounts of monsters and destroyed an entire island was just a tiny fraction of a whole. Menou was inwardly horrified by the girl’s words, all the more so since it was likely the truth.

“She’s like a lighthouse I can connect to for just a moment, but…it looks like the fog ends up coming along and sealing me. Right now, it’s like a one-use-only jack-in-the-box. The fog makes everything useless, even me.”

The fact that the real Pandæmonium was sealed within the fog was good news.

She was still unable to free the swarms of monsters that were sealed in it. That was why she had produced this small offshoot of herself and tried to form a new army of monsters in Libelle.

The fog that was flowing from the monster above the ocean was clearly aiming toward Pandæmonium. Thin at first, it grew thicker and thicker, flowing around the girl and attempting to cover her.

“Now that it’s caught in the fog, this body is useless, too. And since you’ve figured out my trick, let’s move on to the climax!”

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [Gimme lotsa legs.]

The girl’s lower body swelled.

Her lower half was offered up as a sacrifice and changed form. Both legs fused together, then grew larger. This was no small-time summon like the ones she’d done so far. Pandæmonium was pouring all the sacrifices she’d been given in Libelle into this summon to remake her own body.

Soon, she was big enough to break through the fog and look down over the city.

“This is the last of my classic moves! You gotta use all your strength to turn super-big!”

The remade Pandæmonium skittered along the ground. She still had the upper body of a little girl, but from the waist down, she had transformed into a giant centipede. However, instead of insect legs, the monster was moving with human limbs.

With her new centipede body, Pandæmonium grinned and scuttled toward Menou and Ashuna.

Guiding Force: Connect—Improper Attachment, Pure Concept [Time]—Invoke [Acceleration]

Akari’s arm struck Pandæmonium’s body.

Her opponent had conquered Suspension the first time. So instead, Akari used Acceleration on herself and moved faster than the eye could see to break Pandæmonium’s limbs.

But it was to no avail.

Despite her bones being broken in all four limbs, the girl showed no signs of pain. Her body fell to the floor, melted away, and disappeared, and a new girl blocked the door in her place.

“Not too bad. So what’s next?”

Akari almost cursed aloud.

There seemed to be no point in trying to capture or harm her. Yet, she didn’t appear interested in attacking Akari, either. She faced Akari’s attacks head-on, and if she took serious damage, she just sacrificed her own body and summoned herself anew. Thus, the process repeated.

“You… What do you want?”

“Let’s see. How about we say I wanted to talk to someone else from my homeland?”

“Not a chance,” Akari responded instantly. As an Otherworlder herself, certain things were obvious to her.

The girl in front of her was undoubtedly a Human Error. She had gone past Akari’s current state and destroyed herself long ago.

“You don’t have any memories, do you? What could we possibly talk about?”

“Mm…” Pandæmonium giggled.

Each use of a Pure Concept eroded the user’s soul. Of course, their mind tried to shield against this, but it wasn’t a perfect defense. Just as Akari said, Pandæmonium had long since lost all her long-term memories. Any personality and recollections she seemed to have were just on the surface.

Pure Concepts wore down the soul and spirit mercilessly. This girl had already used up her memories a thousand years ago.

“That’s true. But don’t you think you’re being awfully cold?” Pandæmonium peered into Akari’s face, her hands folded behind her back. “All you seem to be worried about is that girl you travel with. You left everything behind to come here, didn’t you? You’re not from this world. Don’t you ever think about Japan and—?”

“I don’t need to.” Akari interrupted in a dark voice. “I don’t need that old world. Not that I remember much about it anyway. All I know is that there was nothing good about that place.”

She remembered this feeling very clearly. There were some things that still stuck with her: People who mocked and gossiped about others. Words that beat down the spirit and put cracks in the heart. A group that tormented her soul.

“Is a world like that really worth anything?”

“Of course it is,” Pandæmonium answered instantly. “Who are you to judge what a world is worth? That’s so selfish. The world doesn’t exist for your sake. We exist for the sake of the world. Listen—do you know why I came here to see you?”

“It wasn’t because we’re from the same homeland?”

“Of course nooot!” Pandæmonium laughed, dismissing her own reason as a lie. “I just wanted to thank you, that’s all.”

“Thank me?”

“Sure. It’s thanks to you that I was able to get out of the fog, you know? So I wanted to say thanks. I even summoned that really big one just so you would be alone.”

She hadn’t just summoned the giant monster to fight against Menou and Ashuna.

She’d destroyed an entire island just to keep Menou and Akari apart.

The little girl bowed her head toward Akari. “Thank you. It’s all because of you that I was able to get this little taste of freedom.”

“Because of me…?”

Akari didn’t understand. She had never seen Pandæmonium before and had certainly never done anything for her. Not once, even in all the many timelines she’d lived through.

“Mm! So you didn’t know. You’ve got no idea how your Regression works, or even where our Pure Concepts come from! You don’t know anything at all!” Pandæmonium beamed and spread her arms wide in a dramatic gesture. “You turned it back, didn’t you? This whole world, over and over and ooover again. You’re the Time person, the one who keeps regressing the world, right? I heard it in the fog. The sound of you rewinding time over and over, grinding the world back.”

This Human Error, who’d been sealed away for a thousand years, knew exactly what Akari had done. She was the one who’d told Manon about Akari’s deeds.

“So the fog creaked, too.”

The distortion had put enormous pressure on the white fog, which kept out even the flow of time. And because of that, the difference in time between the fog and the outside world became a bigger and bigger burden, causing the fog to crack. It was three weeks ago, before Menou came to this town. The fact that Pandæmonium was freed and met Manon in that time was far from a coincidence.

It was the same moment when Akari was summoned into this world. More specifically, it was the exact time that she had used World Regression.

“Did you really think the strange things happening in this town had nothing to do with you? Don’t be silly. It’s all, aaaall your fault!”

Pandæmonium held out her hands.

“Since you’ve caused so many distortions in time, the everlasting white distorted, too. Thanks to you, I was able to squeeze out just my pinky finger. That’s how I could come to this city. I’d like you to distort things even more, but, mm… I suppose that might not be possible.” The little girl tapped her temple. “You’ve lost an awful lot of your memories, haven’t you?”

She was absolutely right.

Akari was well aware that her own memories were fading. It was the vaguest memories that disappeared first. By now, she’d forgotten the majority of her most recent memories of school, too. And once her memories from Japan were all gone, it was likely the ones in this world that would fade next.

The Akari who was normally with Menou wasn’t aware of her own memory loss. It’s difficult to be conscious of something you don’t know you’ve lost, after all.

But this Akari understood the bigger problem with that loss.

“If you want to live, you probably shouldn’t use your Pure Concept anymore. You’ve lost your memories so much that your personality is totally different from the way you were in Japan. Isn’t that right?”

It was true: Akari’s current personality was a far cry from the person she had been in Japan. Of course, her time with Menou was a major contributing factor.

But even more so, it was the loss of her memories from Japan that had influenced her personality change the most.

For the current Akari, the time she spent with Menou made up far more of her memories than her time in Japan. The version of herself from Japan was being worn down to nothing, changing her into the Akari of this world.

“So what?”

But she didn’t care.

Akari had no attachment to the memories she was losing. It truly didn’t bother her if the sixteen years she spent in Japan disappeared completely.

After all, Akari had gained something in this world that she never had in her old one.

“I’ve got a dear friend here who I can trust with my life.”

Akari pointed her finger at the smiling Pandæmonium.

“A friend so important that as long as I remember her, I don’t care if I lose my other memories.”

Her fingers were clenched except for her thumb and index finger, forming the shape of a gun. She aimed it directly at Pandæmonium, and there was a flash of Guiding Light.

Just like that, another memory vanished.

This one had taken place in a classroom at her school in Japan.

She went to an all-girls school, so they were all wearing the same uniform. Sometimes, when she saw dozens of people all in the same outfit as herself, she felt strangely out of place.

When she walked into the classroom, everyone froze and looked straight at her.

The room went cold.

Her classmates’ gazes turned harsh and pierced into her, as if they were all looking at something unpleasant from a distance, then changed to pretending not to see her at all. In a room full of people, Akari was constantly made to feel alone.

She had no friends. Even someone she thought might be her friend quickly stopped being one.

Just before homeroom started, she went to sit down at her desk and noticed something.

It was decorated with flowers.

A cheap white vase sat on her desk, likely purchased from a hundred-yen store, but filled with what looked like an incredibly expensive funeral arrangement.

It was an old-fashioned jab, but it hurt her more than expected.

She thought it was stupid, but she couldn’t laugh.

Despite herself, she cast a blank-faced look around the classroom.

One of them looked away. One seemed uncomfortable. One continued pretending not to see her. And one of them laughed.

She had just forgotten another one of the girls’ faces.

“Don’t get in my way. I can still die in this world. I won’t turn out like you.”

Akari would never become a Human Error…because there was one girl she had met in this world whom she knew she would never forget.

“As long as Menou kills me, I’m fine with that.”

Her best friend was going to kill her. And by killing her, her best friend would live.

Akari believed that firmly, and so she didn’t hesitate.

“You don’t mind if she kills you? What a beautiful friendship.”

Pandæmonium’s smile didn’t waver in the face of the index finger filled with the power of a Pure Concept pointing right at her.

“Why don’t you just turn it back, then? Until your memories run out. You can just keep repeating it, you know? Until your whole personality is gone. The more you repeat it, the more the white fog will bend. You’ll do for me what I can’t do myself. It’s just like that girl said—you’re stirring up this stagnated old world. I’m sure you were called to this planet for that very purpose.”

Akari bit her lip.

All she wanted was to save Menou. But by turning back time over and over for that purpose, she had brought out this monster. If Regression would cause such a monster to be unleashed, then she might bring the world closer to destruction every time she turned back time.

But if Menou was going to die, then she wouldn’t hesitate to use it again.

Menou was already at the heart of all Akari’s memories.

“That’d be a real shame, though. You don’t even know that you’re in a dead end. You really believe there’s a chance at salvation? Unlike that girl who worked so hard in this town, you’ve been taboo from the very beginning, so there’s nothing in the world that can change you!”

“Yes, there is. There has to be! That’s what this power is for!”

“No. You don’t stand a chance. You’ll never be able to get the future you want. You can’t save anyone else, silly. You can’t even change yourself.” Pandæmonium coolly rejected her. “The Pure Concepts in our bodies aren’t for our benefit at all. This planet doesn’t gift them to us for the sake of one person.”

Pandæmonium was giving her advice now, as her predecessor who had fallen a thousand years before. “Don’t you know that World Regression doesn’t mean anything to the people who can connect to the planet’s memories?”

“The planet’s memories?”

“That’s right. The memories of this planet. Guiding Force. The origin of the ‘Lord’ who’s written about in the priestesses’ scriptures. I’m pretty sure I hated that most of all.” The girl pouted cutely. “As long as that exists, you’ll never be able to get ahead, even with a Pure Concept. Think reeeal hard about it, Time person. Have the times you’ve repeated ever been exactly the same as you remember?”

Akari’s finger trembled.

Pandæmonium’s observation was dead-on. Every time she Regressed time, things were always slightly different. This incident was the biggest change, but the terrorist attack on the train in Grisarika Kingdom had been an unexpected event to Akari, too.

“It’s no coincidence that you keep failing. Someone’s targeting you, don’t you see? That’s why you failed over and over. How many times have you repeated things without even realizing that much? This world is never going to go the way you want. Someone else is getting in your way, that’s why.”

The first person who came to mind was the red-haired priestess.

That tall woman who threw back her head when she laughed, who was the very incarnation of ruin and destruction.

Noticing that Akari seemed to have someone in mind, Pandæmonium deepened her smile.

“So listen, I’ll tell you something really interesting.” The little girl leaned in conspiratorially. “They call us the Four Major Human Errors, but the truth is, there were five of us who tried to destroy the world: Dragon, Star, Vessel, Evil…and Ivory. We five tried to fight against the times.”

This girl must have had a name before she became a Human Error. She spoke about herself from the time when she still had a name. “I think we worked really hard together. We thought there was nothing the five of us couldn’t do! At least, I feel like that might’ve been the case.”

The ancient civilization had heavily relied on the powers of Otherworlders. They were able to make use of Pure Concepts in a stable way. There were some drawbacks, but still, they managed to live alongside Otherworlders without them going wild.

But there was one reason those Otherworlders still rebelled in this world.

“It exists. A way home.”

They wanted to go back to their own world.

All they wanted was to return home, no matter the cost. They were desperate to return to their families, their friends, the lives that they had left behind in Japan.

The legendary Otherworlders who were known now as the Four Major Human Errors.

They were simply Japanese people who had tried to rebel against this world and go back to their home and failed.

But that didn’t concern Akari at all.

“Well, I’m not going back.”

She wasn’t like them.

The only world she wanted to live in was this one.

“Menou is in this world, not any other. So there’s no reason for me to go back to Japan.”

“Mm-mm.” Pandæmonium giggled. She formed a rectangle with her thumbs and index fingers and looked at Akari through the makeshift frame. “It’s wonderful. The kind of beautiful friendship that’s so interesting you’d want to watch it on the big screen! I think that last line would be perfect for the trailer.”

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [Fly through the sky.]

The girl’s arms transformed up to the shoulder blades, turning into winged demon arms that attached to her back. Pandæmonium spread her twisted, enormous black wings, shuddering the air with each flap.

“See ya! I always leave as soon as the movie is over, myself, so I’m out of here. Feel free to enjoy the end credits, okay?”

“…I think it’s rude not to stay seated until the lights go up, you know.”

“Mm?” She looked puzzled for a moment, then shrieked with laughter.

It was the kind of laugh that would suit the little girl she appeared to be.

“Ah-ha-ha! Good one! You might have a point! Yeah, it must be really nice to be able to talk to people!”

Once her laughter faded, Pandæmonium took off into the sky.

Her business here was finished. She had sowed the evil seeds of doubt in Akari’s heart. It was clear from the way Akari watched the girl fly away until she was out of view, her gaze wavering with uncertainty.

Akari’s firm belief in Time Regression had been shaken to its foundations by Pandæmonium’s words.

The fog spread as far as the eye could see.

It was heavy and oppressive, filling one’s vision with whiteness. Just one small portion of the fog barrier that had sealed Pandæmonium for a thousand years had leaked out with the appearance of the giant monster.

As it flowed from the monster down to the ocean, the fog seeped toward land—toward its target. For Menou and Ashuna, it was just a hindrance to their vision, but for Pandæmonium, it held an obvious weight as it wrapped around her.

Most likely, Pandæmonium would soon be bound by the fog and rendered immobile, even if they didn’t do anything. She seemed to have accepted that and was using up all the power she had left to fight before it caught her completely.

The lower body of a centipede creeped toward Menou and Ashuna.

Pandæmonium’s lower half had transformed into a giant insect as wide as a full-grown man. Instead of centipede legs, it had the limbs of humans. And where there should have been an insect’s head, there was Pandæmonium’s upper body, still shaped like a little girl.

The centipede body coiled around the two young women, trying to crush them.

“Don’t underestimate me, Pandæmonium.”

Guiding Force: Connect—Royal Sword, Crest—Double Invoke [Slash: Expansion, Flameburst]

Ashuna’s sword produced a massive blade of flame.

It cut through the surrounding fog, spraying out red sparks.

“You’ve got some nerve to challenge me to a match of brute force!”

The fiery blade struck the centipede’s giant body.

There was a roar loud enough to tear through eardrums. The result was instantaneous: Pandæmonium’s centipede body was violently torn apart. Bits of it flew everywhere, spraying out body fluids.

But the girl’s upper half didn’t seem concerned about her destroyed body.

“There’s more where that came from!”

The centipede was horrifically tough. Every one of the cut-off segments of its body was still living. They crawled along the ground with human limbs, charging toward Ashuna from all sides.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 2:5—Invoke [Rejoice, for the wall that surrounds a pious flock of sheep shall never crumble.]

A barrier formed by a scripture conjuring pushed back the charging centipede fragments.

Pandæmonium widened her eyes. Menou must have used up all her Guiding Force with all those scripture conjurings from before. She shouldn’t be able to invoke any more—and then the girl realized what had happened.

When she linked with the earthen vein, power had flowed into her body and restored her Guiding Force. Her physical and mental exhaustion must be deeper than ever, but her power was practically at its peak.

“Mm. What a strange body you have.”

“Not as strange as yours.”

As the barrier of light vanished, Menou cut through the fog and leaped into the air. Her movements were so nimble that they scarcely moved the fog.

Pandæmonium didn’t miss a beat.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [Peekaboo. Guess who’s behind yooou.]

The scattered centipede pieces turned into black shadows. They gathered together into a sharp black spear, flying straight for Menou’s back.

Even if she accelerated with Gale, the shadow would still follow her and catch up. None of Menou’s moves that Pandæmonium had seen would be enough to escape this attack. The shadow spear pierced perfectly through Menou’s body in midair—or so it appeared.

But then Menou vanished like a mirage.

The black shadow flew straight through her afterimage, knocking aside the dagger at the center of her hazy outline.

“Mm?” Pandæmonium followed the arc of the spinning dagger with curious eyes.

She hadn’t used any crest conjuring. The dagger wasn’t a Guiding vessel capable of producing illusions, either. And yet, something had created a detailed image out of Guiding Light with the dagger at the center.

Guiding Camouflage.

It was an application of Guiding Enhancement, so there was no indication when it was invoked. Just as Ashuna had been fooled at the evening ball, Pandæmonium had been misled about Menou’s position.

“Tricky move, isn’t it?” Ashuna grinned. Behind her was Menou, standing perfectly still. Even in a state of rest, producing her own image by way of Guiding Thread required a great deal of concentration.

But there was no need to produce the image any longer.

There was nothing left protecting Pandæmonium.

Menou began to construct a conjuring, sending Guiding Light flowing through the scripture clutched under her arm.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 3:1—Invoke [And the oncoming enemy did hear the tolling of the bell.]

The solemn tolling of the bell bore down on Pandæmonium from directly above her. With each peal, the black shadow broke into smaller and smaller pieces, and the lower body of the centipede began to crumble. The conjuring mercilessly rent all the inhuman parts with its sound, until all that was left was the upper body of a little girl.

“Mm-mm… I guess this really is the end now.” Pandæmonium’s body began to melt away. She had used up all the life force sacrificed to her.

“Let me ask one last question.” Menou maintained the bell and kept her distance as she spoke. “What was your goal in tempting Manon and causing all this madness in Libelle? Revenge on the world that sealed you away? Or are you plotting to escape with your real body?”

“Mm, wrong on both counts. I do have my likes and dislikes, but I don’t reeeally hold a grudge against anyone, you know?” As her body fell apart, the girl’s tone was still as light and amused as ever. “You still don’t understand, do you? I don’t have a goal—I just wanted to enjoy the process. I’m starring in a monster movie today, remember? There are lots of different outcomes, even the ones where I lose. I like happy endings like this, too. I mean, I’d prefer it if at least one person died, but that’s just my personal preference, so it doesn’t really matter.”

By turning herself from a weak little girl into a monster with a giant centipede’s lower body, Pandæmonium had lost her ability to use her own death to summon herself back to life. Since more than half of her body was no longer her original self, this death didn’t count as hers. She had deliberately cast aside her own makeshift immortality and chose to turn herself into a giant monster instead.

After all, this Pandæmonium only amounted to a single pinky finger, so it was no major loss. Since calling a monster out of Pandemonium, where her real self was still trapped, had summoned the fog barrier as well, she had evidently decided that it would be more fun to use up all her power at once in this battle.

For Pandæmonium, combat in this world was nothing more than entertainment. She made her decisions based not on benefit, but on which option would be the most fun.

Which is why it was so difficult for Menou to understand.

“Then why? If you don’t have a goal, then I don’t see how throwing the world into chaos would be entertaining for you. How can you possibly find things like today fun when you don’t even have memories or a personality left?!”

“Because I’m Evil.”

As she dissolved into a pile of flesh, the girl responded without any hesitation.

“I’m the root of all Evil in this world.”

Were those really the words of a human?

“I bring chaos to this world. I bring carnage to this planet. I interfere with anything good, all in accordance with the Pure Concept that’s attached to this body.”

The inhuman conviction she spoke of was far more disturbing than the sight of her rapidly decomposing body.

It was far beyond Menou’s insistence that she herself was a villain. This was a Human Error, born of a Pure Concept that attached to a young spirit and was used far beyond the limit. The Evil that colluded with her body was speaking of its own unwritten rules.

“I am Evil. And Evil does not perish. I am the incarnation of the Evil that runs rampant in the hearts of every human born in this world.”

She was the ultimate outcome of an Otherworlder who had fused completely with their Pure Concept.

Her body, soul, and spirit had all been completely overtaken by the Pure Concept of Evil. It seemed as if she still had a personality, but in reality, that was long gone. Her memories had been used up completely, consumed by the countless years and uses of her powers.

This girl’s one and only role was to embody the concept of Evil that was born in this world.

“So I’ll let you in on a secret, lady. You, who walk in the world alongside the not-yet-complete Time. You, who carry a tiny hint of Ivory—the one who went from being the last hope of us four to becoming our doom.”

The countless monsters that had scattered across the entire continent were all her offspring and a part of her very self at the same time. Most of the biggest monsters were sealed within the fog, but there were still more monsters and demons in the land than humanity could fully comprehend.

The Evil that was born of her thoughts and flesh still continued to attack and kill humans throughout the world in the form of monsters and demons.

That was the true essence of wickedness.

Incidents like this one were only an extra little opportunity for Pandæmonium.

“The Sword of Salt that destroyed Dragon, the strongest of the Pure Concepts among the four of us! A mortal strike from the weapon Ivory wielded could destroy any old Time. Even the ever-present timeline would be turned to pure salt.”

“Why would you tell me such a thing?”

Even as she demanded this, Menou sensed instinctively that what the girl said was true.

After all, if it were true, that would strike Menou’s heart all the harder. And Evil knew exactly what words would pierce someone’s heart the most.

“Mm-mm, have you forgotten already? Because I’m Evil. When I see people being buddy-buddy, it’s only natural that I want to put a stop to such a good thing. Don’t forget that, okay?”

The girl with the cherubic smile desired chaos above all else.

“Now you know there’s a surefire way to kill that girl.”

Finally, the destruction of her body reached her face. Even as her facial features melted away and exposed her cheekbones, she never once stopped smiling.

“Looks like that’s about it…but I won’t disappear. Even if this me isn’t here anymore, it’s still unthinkable that I could ever really be gone.”

She let out one last innocent, cheerful, childlike laugh as she gave her parting words.

“I’m the Evil who gets into everyone’s hearts, even yours!”

Fitting of an Evil worse than any monster, demon, or human to the very end, Pandæmonium left behind a parting gift in Menou’s chest.

She had revealed a surefire method of killing Akari and severing their relationship forever: the Sword of Salt.

As soon as this Pandæmonium died, the fog began to clear up. The monster that had destroyed the village was gone as well.

“I guess it’s the end for real this time.” Ashuna shook her head and put her sword away. “Honestly, there’s a lot I want to ask you, but…I’ll let it go just this once. I’m feeling rather tired myself, so I’ll be taking my leave. Say hello to Momo for me.”

Without further ado, the princess turned on her heel and left, looking magnificent as ever as she strode away with her blond hair swishing.

Left alone, Menou clenched her fist.

She had a destination now.

The Sword of Salt: a conjuring left behind by Ivory, who had sealed or destroyed all the Four Major Human Errors. Menou would use this sword, which could destroy any Pure Concept, to kill Akari.

Her destination now was the same as the last stop on the journey she’d taken as a child.

Menou closed her eyes. Somewhere along the way, it had become all too easy to picture Akari’s sunflower-like smile, blossoming in the darkness behind her eyelids.

That carefree smile always beamed brightly at Menou…

In her mind’s eye, she saw Akari’s smile overlap with the grin on Pandæmonium’s bloodstained face.

“If Akari is going to turn into something like that…”

Then it would be far better to kill her…with my own hands.

Amid the still-lingering fog, the future was too clouded to see for certain. But now, their journey had a destination.

The far west, where the Sword of Salt stood.

Though Menou didn’t speak her resolution aloud, her face was full of grim determination as she walked away, pushing through the fog.

Far to the south of the port city, above the ocean…

The fog was still deep, thick, and heavy as ever. In a realm full of pure white as far as the eye could see, Pandæmonium heaved a sigh as the improvised monster movie she’d been watching came to an end.

“Mm… I’m just so weak.”

Pandæmonium could see and experience everything her finger puppet did. Of course, all the sinister conspiracies and chaos that had occurred in Libelle had been conveyed to the real her in the fog.

In the end, it resulted in one of her disappearing.

Pandæmonium gazed down at her right hand.

Her right pinky finger was gone. She had cut it off and sacrificed it in order to escape through the tiny hole in the fog, to create a finger puppet. Sacrifices made to invoke an Original Sin Conjuring were irreversible; the little finger she’d lost would never return to normal.

“That’s fine, though.”

To her, the sacrifice she’d made was no big deal.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Send [Come back now, let’s go home.]

Her right arm melted away.

She had sacrificed her right arm to perform a summoning. The giant monster that had been called into Libelle returned beneath her feet.

Pandæmonium pressed the stump of her missing right arm against the monster.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Return [Because you belong to me.]

The monster shrank rapidly. Its enormous mass was compressed to an unbelievable degree, until the once-giant monster clung to the girl’s arm, still living.

A body used as sacrifice, even just a part, would be lost forever and could never regrow.

Which was why she just had to reattach something else instead.

Every one of the monsters in this world was a part of her, after all. The difference between her power and that of her finger puppet was nothing more than the amount of sacrifices they could offer up.

All of this world’s monsters were born and flooded into the world when she first used her Pure Concept of Evil to open the door of Original Sin a thousand years ago. She was the lord of those countless monsters, the root of all things bad. All of the Evil that ran rampant in this world, be it monster or demon, was a part of her, and could be sacrificed as such.

As long as there were still monsters and demons in the world, the real Pandæmonium could never be destroyed. The finger puppet was the same way, too. The first monster that she summoned was the Evil finger puppet. It was only because she was killed after those had all been destroyed that the finger puppet melted away.

It would take some time before she adapted to her new right arm. She wouldn’t be able to make a new finger puppet from that hand for a while.

Which was why she decided to enjoy the other one instead.

In the midst of the white fog, which had leaked out and grown just a little bit lighter, the little girl raised her left hand and grinned.

“The other me still seems to be doing pretty well.”

One of the fingers of her left hand—the pinky finger—was missing.