The Traitorous Arm

Night was wearing on in the desert.

While the air was growing cooler without the light of the sun, it wasn’t completely dark. The full moon shone in the sky with nothing to obstruct its glow from faintly illuminating the sand.

Beneath the moonlight that was strong enough to cast a shadow, Ashuna threw off the robe she wore to fend off the sun’s heat, revealing an airy outfit underneath. Fabric cut into diamond shapes just barely covered the crucial areas on her upper body, and her notched skirt fluttered in the breeze. The outfit was even more provocative than that of a desert dancer, more elegant than the standard garb of any noble—and it happened to be what she usually wore.

“Let’s see…”

Before the eyes of Ashuna and the knights she led was a decidedly suspicious-looking base. It was hidden in the shadows of sand dunes, built from reused ruins with heightened security. In fact, to deem it suspicious, one would have to find it in the first place. It would most likely be near-impossible to locate this cleverly hidden area without a guide.

This was the headquarters of the armed human trafficking group Iron Chain.

Even from a distance, one could get a sense of its enormous scale. Ashuna had also learned in her meeting with Menou that this place doubled as some kind of ceremonial conjuring circle.

Ashuna approached the belly of the beast head-on, making for the front gate. She made no effort to hide or sneak in. Instead, she strode forward with the confidence of a king.

The guards noticed Ashuna and watched her alertly.

They were still outside of the range of Guiding guns. Stopping a fair distance away, Ashuna drew her sword.

“Those guns might be convenient and dangerous, to be sure, but unlike Guiding vessels with crests, they aren’t very practical.”

She was speaking more to herself than anyone else. Unlike crest conjurings, Guiding guns didn’t require an invocation. One could harm other people just by pulling a trigger, no knowledge of materialogy or crestology required. In exchange, they had a limited range, and there was no way to increase or decrease their power.

Ashuna charged her broadsword with Guiding Force.

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

The night was illuminated.

The power drawn from her soul flowed into the sword and activated the crest conjurings, creating a massive sword made of flame.

“Guess we’ll let ourselves in.”

The violent flames pushed back the quiet night, their vicious heat scorching the cool air. As the fiery blade burned brilliantly, the men standing guard gaped up at it in disbelief.

Then the massive burning sword swung down without hesitation.

As the blade of flame closed in, the guards scrambled away in a panic. This was far beyond what they could handle with their Guiding guns. They scattered like roaches, not even bothering to sound the alarm.

The sword kept its momentum and exploded just as it hit the gate.

With that massive explosion, everyone in the base turned their attention toward the Princess Knight, whose sword once tore through a castle. In addition to those who were already on guard, even the people who were sleeping had jumped awake. As the base quickly dissolved into chaos, Ashuna Grisarika walked forward without hiding, without hurrying, and led the knights through the gate she’d destroyed into the headquarters of Iron Chain.

Her plan to deal with the force that came to counterattack them was exceedingly simple.

As she bathed in the murderous gazes of the hostiles in front of her, Ashuna’s eyes crinkled delightedly.

“Not bad.”

The place was turning into a battlefield. Several assailants jumped forward to attack. As she fended them off, Ashuna kept pushing forward. The sporadic nature of the counterattacks was an invitation. They obviously wanted to guide Ashuna somewhere, and she was happy to oblige.

They led her into a dead end surrounded by buildings on three sides. The walls had openings for guns to shoot through.

“Oh-ho?” Ashuna whistled at what appeared in front of her. The way they’d deployed their resources in response to her attack showed the high quality of their personnel. And more than anything, the three massive opponents in front of her made her heart dance with excitement.

Guiding armored warriors.

They weren’t autonomous conjured soldiers—they were exoskeleton-like conjured weapons that were steered by human pilots. When three of them appeared before her, Ashuna flapped a hand at the knights behind her, gesturing for them to back away.

In the short time they’d known her, Ashuna had completely earned the trust of the knights. They nodded at one another and left the area.

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

Ashuna’s sword stretched to block the path of the Guiding armored warriors as they tried to chase after the knights.

“Hold it. You’re going to decline my invitation? It’s a man’s duty to dance with a lady who’s offered her hand, you know.”

“…Good point.”

A muffled voice responded from within: the man piloting the Guiding armor. He pushed Ashuna’s blade aside and turned to face her.

“We can just kill you first, then go after them.”

“Oh?” The corners of her lips quirked. “Let’s see you try. Don’t bore me now, all right?”

Ashuna grinned viciously and struck.

The front gate of the base was sent flying with a loud boom. With that explosion as their signal, Menou and Sahara sneaked inside.

They were headed for the building that she had guessed was the main stronghold when she rescued Akari. They did a quick sweep of the first floor, then headed to the second to destroy the entrance. Just as they were soundlessly sprinting down the hallway, both girls stopped at once.

A conjured soldier appeared from around the corner.

It had a spiderlike shape, with eight long limbs and a small Guiding furnace built in that appeared to be powering it. Its central trunk was about the size of a human torso, while the legs had small claws that allowed it to climb on the wall.

Those legs were more than deadly enough weapons to destroy a human. The spider lunged, thrusting two of those legs forward.

“Ah?!”

Menou and Sahara dodged to the left and right respectively, avoiding the attack by a hair.

Failing to stab them, the legs scraped across the floor. It’s certainly strong enough to kill, Menou thought, calmly assessing the opponent. As she used her sharp senses to dodge each attack, she thrust her dagger into a joint, then grimaced.

The blade didn’t break through.

“Shoot.”

The joint felt thick and hard, yet elastic as well. Even attacks aimed at the more fragile-looking areas didn’t seem to work.

“A Blue Spider,” Sahara muttered without taking her eyes off it. “It’s an insect-style soldier specialized in indoor combat.”

“You clearly learned a lot on the lines of defense against the Mechanical Society. So what’s its weak point?”

“Doesn’t really have one. It moves fast. It hits hard. And it’s flexible yet tough, even the legs. Not to mention it has a ton of those. If I had to name a weak point, I guess I’d say it doesn’t have any long-distance attacks.”

Just as Sahara finished speaking, more of the same model of conjured soldier emerged, enough to fill the hallway. Menou, however, had already decided on a plan the moment she heard Sahara’s description.

“Follow my lead, Sahara.” Menou charged her scripture with Guiding Force.

If the enemy didn’t have any long-distance attacks, she would just have to crush it right away with a powerful conjuring.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 12:1—

Menou’s construction speed was astoundingly fast, but it still took a few seconds. Sensing that she was about to invoke something, the Blue Spiders all jumped toward her.

But Sahara stood in their way.

“Mm.”

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Arm—Activate [Skill: Giant’s Palm]

Sahara’s artificial arm produced a palm big enough to cover the entire hallway. The soldiers bit and stabbed at the palm-shaped Guiding Light, trying to break through, but they couldn’t move forward.

It was exactly the backup Menou needed. She used this chance to unleash her conjuring.

Invoke [Strike the nail, strike the nail, all to give support.]

The Guiding Light unleashed from her scripture took the form of countless nails.

As they burst forward, Menou controlled them to fly into the swarm of spiders. Some sent their limbs flying off, while others crushed their torsos and destroyed their inner workings.

They were wiped out in seconds. Sahara whistled. “Nice going, Flarette. You’ve got serious skills. No normal person could control that many nails.”

“Really? Well, I suppose my command of Guiding Force is the one strength I have to my name.” She closed the scripture and looked around.

It didn’t look like any more attacks were imminent. The fact that so many conjured soldiers were sent their way, however, meant their invasion had been noticed.

The element of surprise was gone now. The enemy would be preparing for them.

“They’ve certainly noticed us now.”

“Let’s split up. If the base itself is a conjuring circle, this building must be the center. You track down the conjurer here, Menou. I’ll go around to the towers in each of the cardinal directions.”

She had a point: The most important goal was to destroy the conjuring circle.

“I’ll go on up, then.”

“All right.”

Leaving Sahara to take care of any remaining attackers, Menou headed upstairs to find the wanted criminal she anticipated lurking there.

I’ll end this in less than a minute, thought the man leading the force dispatched to take on the attacking knights as he accepted Ashuna’s challenge in his Guiding armor.

Guiding armor was a powerful weapon. It automatically connected the pilot’s Guiding Force to the machinery, circulating and amplifying it. The disadvantage was that one couldn’t use other vessels while wearing the armor, but the rewards were more than worth it for the pilot.

He gained immense strength, mobility, and weight that went far beyond his regular body.

These weapons could enhance the Guiding Force of the naturally weak and make the strong even stronger. There was no training required; just getting into the Guiding armor was enough to grant enormous power, far beyond the Guiding Enhancement of any ordinary knights.

Princess Knight or not, Ashuna was just one person, and they had three Guiding armored warriors on their side. Not to mention there were men armed with Guiding guns within the surrounding buildings. There was no way they could lose.

And in addition to their confidence, the men had vulgar ulterior motives.

Ashuna was too tall, but even so, she was an incredibly rare beauty. And her arrogance as a born royal had a certain appeal. They would beat her down, destroy her dignity, and make her regret ever being born. The man licked his lips eagerly.

Less than a minute into the battle, one of his comrades was cut in half.

“…!”

He probably hadn’t imagined even until the moment he perished that he could be sliced in the Guiding armor. Since it drew out and enhanced the pilot’s Guiding Force, the armor was heavier and harder than any ordinary metal, tougher than a crest barrier.

When Ashuna’s sword slashed down right through the middle of his body, however, the man died without even time to scream. Alarmed by the unbelievable sight, the two remaining men in Guiding armor hastily backed away.

At first, they’d assumed surrounding her with three Guiding armored warriors would be enough to crush her. Their armor could deflect most attacks, and they had strength and weight that outmatched most humans even with Guiding Enhancement. Since there were three of them, surely they could defeat any opponent—knight, priestess, or otherwise.

And yet, the woman in front of them had somehow pushed back one of the men surrounding her, then cut him down as he lost his balance.

Cover fire sprayed from the windows in an obvious show of panic. Many of the bullets hit the ground, sending up clouds of dust. But they couldn’t stop Ashuna’s movements. She kept sprinting forward, even as bullets struck the ground at her feet. As she zigzagged steadily across the uneven ground, the light of Guiding Enhancement left a phosphorescent trail behind her; dazzled by the constantly moving light, the gunmen wavered every which way.

“Don’t get carried away, punk!”

The armored warrior stepped into Ashuna’s way to stop her.

Ashuna’s abilities were certainly exceptional. But she was still just one unarmored woman. If he could prevent her from moving, the Guiding guns could shoot her full of holes while he was protected by his Guiding armor.

“Ha!” Barking out a laugh, Ashuna flung her broadsword aside and grabbed the armor head-on. It was a direct, hand-to-hand contest of strength. And somehow, the one to lose was the man in the Guiding armor.

“How nostalgic. My sister had one of these toys in her collection, you see. I remember being so excited to try it when I was young.”

There was no more cover fire. As the man started to panic, he realized why.

He was being used as a shield. If they tried to fire through any of the holes in the three walls, he would be right in the way as he grappled with her. And she was bearing down on him too heavily to allow him to move aside and give them a clear shot. This was no coincidence. They had planned to use Ashuna’s determination to trap her, yet now she had lured him into being a shield instead.

“Damn you…! This can’t be—”

“But when I tried to pilot one, it got overloaded with power and broke.”

Unable to hold up to the contest of strength, the enhanced exoskeleton arm broke under the pressure. Ashuna promptly grabbed the limb, wrenched it out of the shoulder socket, and flung it aside.

“Just goes to show that fighting with your own muscles is the way to go.”

Her fist punched through the armor and smashed the head of the man inside.

Now there was only one squad leader left.

“Shoot her full of holes!”

On the leader’s command, the surrounding Guiding gun users began firing indiscriminately.

These guns consumed the Guiding Force of the user each time they were fired, but this was no time to be sparing about it. Unlike when they were taking careful aim before, now they were clearly just shooting without much thought. As the bullets sprayed randomly, the last man charged forward. These guns weren’t strong enough to pierce Guiding armor. He couldn’t defeat her one-on-one, but if she was caught in a storm of bullets…

“This is what I hate about Guiding guns.” Ashuna sighed in disappointment and charged her broadsword.

Guiding Force: Connect—Royal Sword, Crest—Multi-Invoke [Multi-Barrier]

The crest conjuring activated. Several shields formed from her sword. The walls of light not only protected Ashuna herself, but expanded to swallow up the men shooting as well.

Startled by the sudden appearance of barriers in front of them, the men were unable to react in time, and their shots ricocheted back toward them. One by one, they went down groaning from their own bullets.

Observing this result, Ashuna spat in disappointment. “They always go down too easily.”

Ashuna had figured out the shooters’ positions from their firing. The Guiding armored warrior who remained stood there stunned.

“What the…what the hell is happening h—ah!”

Ashuna appeared right in front of his eyes, swinging her broadsword upward. His face twisted as he realized that the last thing he would ever see was the smile of this woman, enjoying the battle from the bottom of her heart.

“You monster…”

“Now, those are some choice last words.” She brought her blade down without a hint of mercy. “It’s embarrassing to hear such high praise from someone you just fought to the death.”

As she grinned with pleasure, the two halves of the Guiding armored warrior collapsed behind her. Ashuna let her broadsword whiz through the air, shaking off the blood.

The battle was just getting started.

“Now, who’s next?”

Her appetite for combat still had to be sated, and there were still enemies to defeat. How much of her normally latent power would she be able to let loose today? Wiping blood from her cheek with the palm of her hand, she trembled with the uncontrollable desire to fight.

Ashuna Grisarika wore a half-crazed smile as she threw herself back into the fray.

The gunshots that had been going on for the past few minutes stopped abruptly.

Ashuna must have won that fight. As she assessed the battle situation based on sound, Menou kept moving through the heart of the base, wiping out one floor at a time until she reached the door to the top.

“So you’re here.” A slender young man was waiting on the top floor.

It was the boy who’d seemed to be the leader of the group that attacked them in town before. He turned his cold gaze toward Menou; the right eye was a prosthetic.

He has an artificial body part, too. Alarms went off in Menou’s head.

“I take it that you’re…not the ringleader here.”

The leader, Wolff, was a man near his forties. This young man must have been the other wanted criminal, Miller.

Had Wolff run away, then? And if so, would Sahara catch him? Menou’s mind raced through the possibilities as she steadied her dagger.

“You must be Miller, the vice-captain of Iron Chain. Where’s the leader, Wolff?”

“Killed him.”

She hadn’t actually expected him to give her the principal offender’s whereabouts, but his response was even more surprising.

“…Killed him? Was it you? But why?”

“Wolff decided to scrap this base. What a ridiculous idea. By luring your team in, we’ll be able to activate the conjuring circle without a problem.”

Another one. When Menou found a second strange connection, her guard went up even higher. “I knew it…so this base itself really is a summoning circle.”

“Yep. The kind that activates when conditions are met. Since we can’t use veins out here, we just have to provide it with Guiding Force through other means. This circle functions by absorbing Guiding Force from the dead. Wolff knew that and still didn’t want his men to die.”

“I see.”

Evidently, there were different levels of scumminess. Menou grew that much wiser from this unexpected lesson and made a mental note. The former leader had been the type to value his subordinates’ lives over his goals.

“And you?”

“You really need to ask?”

He had a point. If he valued people’s lives, he wouldn’t have killed his leader.

“This conjuring circle. Is it the kind for summoning Otherworlders? You must know that a circle on a level surface won’t connect to the other world, correct?”

“No need. There are Otherworlders in this world, too.”

At first, Menou didn’t understand what he meant.

“Did you know? The barrier around the Mechanical Society is weakening. It’s one of the Four Major Human Errors. This circle was made to summon and control a part of it.”

A part of one of the Four Major Human Errors. Their plan was to take its power for their own. In other words, Iron Chain was attempting the same thing that Manon Libelle did.

“Done with the questions?”

“Yes. Thank you for answering. Is there any particular reason why you’re being so forthright?”

“Whether I die or you die, it’s not going to change the end result.”

“Don’t worry. Now that I’ve heard all that, I’ll be sure to capture you alive.”

To put it another way, a conditional activation for the summoning circle meant that it wouldn’t activate as long as those conditions weren’t met. Menou just had to make sure that neither she nor Miller died.

“Ha!” Miller sneered. “Go ahead and try, Flarette. If I kill someone like you, my level’s sure to go up.”

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—

Menou’s brow furrowed at the developing conjuring. She’d seen a very similar structure quite recently.

But why? As her doubts began to rise, the conjuring activated.

Activate [Skill: Petrifying Snake Eye]

Light burst out of Miller’s fake eye. Everything the greenish Guiding Light shone on turned to gray stone.

As Menou dived out of the way, she considered the conjured phenomenon. Even if the artificial eye was a Guiding vessel, the conjuring was far too specific. From a materialogy standpoint, there was no way something the size of an eyeball should be able to contain the components for something as unusual as petrifaction.

“Is that an ancient relic?”

“No.”

She wondered if it was a Guiding vessel from the civilization that existed a thousand years ago, but Miller denied it. His voice carried an uncharacteristic fervor.

“This is power I gained myself.”

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Scorching Scarlet Eye]

Miller’s prosthetic eye changed color from green to red. As the conjured phenomenon unfolded, everything in his line of sight burst into flame. Menou managed to duck down and just barely avoid it. Trailing behind her, the end of her ponytail was singed by the flames.

The smell of burning hair filled her nostrils, but there was no time to worry about that. Menou jumped up toward the ceiling to avoid Miller’s line of sight.

He was able to use the same Guiding vessel to invoke a completely different conjuring—a feat normally limited to an ultra-complex vessel like the scriptures of the Faust. And yet, Miller was creating scorching flames just by looking around. Doubting the existence of the threat attacking her wouldn’t help her survive it.

One way or another, the source of his power was definitely his artificial eye. Menou kept moving to dodge the attacks from his sight line.

As she jumped into the air, she twisted around and used the ceiling to push off toward the wall. Menou’s Guiding Enhancement-heightened physical abilities let her maneuver her way behind Miller.

“I’m impressed you can dodge this.”

Miller spun around to chase after her, then focused his eyes on one point. What was he trying to do? As Menou watched warily, a ball of flame formed where Miller’s vision was focused.

The flame’s level of heat was highly condensed.

Seeing this, Menou immediately sent Guiding Force into the crest in her priestess robes.

Guiding Force: Connect—Priestess Robes, Crest—

The ball of flame contracted.

—Invoke [Barrier]

There was a massive explosion.

At point-blank range, the blast pierced through the barrier created by the crest in her robes. The explosion in the small, tightly sealed room lowered the atmospheric pressure drastically, weighing down her body.

“Well, now you’ve done it!”

That could have easily killed her. Managing to get by with only light burns even as she was blown away by the blast, Menou kicked off the wall to dive toward Miller from the side. If she could entrap him in close-quarters combat, he wouldn’t be able to use those attacks for fear of getting caught in the blast himself. Menou aimed for that as she drew out her dagger.

Miller’s right eye gleamed blue.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Bewitching Evil Eye]

“Enough, I’ve seen through you already!”

Menou held the side of her dagger aloft as she shouted. All of Miller’s attacks thus far had been by way of his line of sight. So this time, she used the reflective surface of her dagger to bounce the blue Guiding Light back at him.

“Nngh!”

The blue light ricocheted right into Miller. Trapped in some illusion of his own making, he stopped moving. Menou used that moment to close in. She tried to slash at him, but he regained his senses too quickly.

Miller immediately brought up a thick knife and blocked Menou’s blow.

Their eyes met, and they glared at each other at point-blank range. After having his conjuring reflected back at him, Miller seemed reluctant to use another one.

Hesitation meant an opportunity for attack. Menou swung her dagger again and sliced Miller’s cheek.

“Tch!” Miller lashed back with his knife—a feint, trying to put distance between them. Menou dodged it by a hair, refusing to give an inch. As she narrowly avoided his attack, she used the momentum of the dodge to drive her right leg into her opponent’s knee.

It could have easily broken his knee joint, but Miller managed to tough it out with Guiding Enhancement. His knife swung down toward her.

Menou parried the blade with her dagger. It was a heavy attack, even with Menou’s arm strength boosted by Guiding Enhancement. Miller, sensing that he could wear her down, pushed even harder. Abandoning the prospect of pushing back with brute strength, Menou jumped backward.

As she withdrew, it created an opening. Menou watched her opponent closely to analyze his unusual features.

Miller’s physical abilities obviously exceeded Menou’s. Without Guiding Enhancement, there would be no comparison at all, and even with it at full throttle, he still seemed to be faster and stronger. His movements were polished, and his hand-to-hand combat skills were on par with Menou’s, too. With the addition of his unique conjurings from his artificial eye, he was undoubtedly a dangerous opponent.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Beastly Red Eye]

His eye turned red. But it seemed different from the flame attack he’d used before.

Miller charged toward her head-on. Even with Menou’s advanced kinetic vision, his outline seemed to blur with the sheer speed of his movement. It was on a completely different level from the physical abilities he’d shown thus far. This was no ordinary Guiding Enhancement. The conjuring from his prosthetic eye was further augmenting his movements.

But his trajectory was simple to follow. Menou was about to use a conjuring to counter him when suddenly—Miller shot up into the air.

“What?!”

It was a vertical jump with almost no buildup, seemingly using only his ankles. Menou’s attempts to read his movement were thrown off by the unusual shift, leaving her frozen in surprise for just a fraction of a second.

But Miller didn’t stop moving. He hit the ceiling, pressed both hands against it, bent his knees, and stored up power. He was aiming directly at Menou below him. Miller dropped straight down, like a spear shooting toward the ground.

The floor broke below him.

His kick was all the more powerful with the entirety of his body weight and gravity behind it.

Menou dropped along with the sturdy stone fragments of the floor. She shifted her position in midair and landed on her feet.

But Miller was waiting for that moment.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Scorching Scarlet Eye]

Flames as thick as flowing magma flew toward her.

He had aimed for the exact moment that she lowered her guard to focus on landing safely. But the flames didn’t reach Menou.

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

Unexpected occurrences in the midst of battle were well within Menou’s expectations. Which was why she had an ace in the hole that could be played in the nick of time to deal with any such developments.

The wide variety of scripture conjurings was beyond compare to anything else.

A pure wall formed around the advancing flames. Menou was fully aware that she would be open to attack in the moment of landing. She had prepared the defensive conjuring well in advance.

And in the moments before she landed, she invoked another scripture conjuring.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 1:2—Invoke [Drive in the stake and make known the ground where all shall begin.]

Menou’s Guiding Force created a stake of light, which drove into the ground at her feet. It wasn’t an attack conjuring. She was using it to fix her own Guiding Force in one stable place.

As soon as she finished her preparations, the effects of the barrier wore off. She threw her dagger to fend off Miller as he immediately moved to close in on her.

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

Thread made out of Guiding Force formed around her dagger’s hilt. As it flew toward him with the thread trailing behind, Miller tossed a knife of his own to block it.

The two blades crashed in midair and went flying. Miller grabbed the now empty-handed Menou’s shoulder and flashed his red-tinged fake eye toward her from point-blank range.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Eye, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Skill: Scorching Scarlet Eye]

“Now you die.”

“That’s my line.”

Miller’s killer move was a moment too late.

The dagger that was knocked to the ground had ended up buried point-first in the solidified Guiding Force area that Menou had created earlier.

Guiding Force: Connect (via Guiding Thread)—Dagger, Crest—Remote Invoke [Gale]

A burst of wind shot up from beneath Miller’s feet.

She had used the Guiding Thread as a conduit to activate the crest conjuring with the Guiding Force she’d solidified in advance. Unaware of this, Miller fell right into her trap.

Miller clutched his eye as he was sent crashing into the ceiling. He couldn’t control his movements in midair. As his body spun around, his eyesight spun with it, creating flames that danced wildly throughout the room.

Miller came spiraling back down. As he fell, Menou sent the hem of her robe fluttering in the air, raising her leg in an almost perfectly vertical line—then brought it down on him with all her might.

“OOMPH!”

It was a perfect ax kick.

Menou’s heel came down directly on Miller’s stomach. The impact when it smashed him into the ground was intense enough that he choked and spat up bile.

As soon as he was immobilized, Menou mercilessly thrust her fingers into his right eye socket, which contained his prosthetic eye.

“S-stop—”

“I’ll be taking this.”

“…ngaaaAAAAAH!”

She gouged the artificial eye out.

There was a snapping sound like optic nerves being torn apart. Ordinarily, prosthetic eyes were only for show, but it appeared this one was connected to his brain after all.

“A Guiding vessel made with Primary Colors, is it?”

Menou grimaced and tossed the stolen eye far from where Miller could reach it. She could figure out what to do with it later.

Miller’s abilities were astounding. His basic stats were high, and he had very unusual powers on top of it. But that just made him an ideal opponent for Menou.

For better or worse, the likes of Momo and Ashuna generally didn’t go after their opponents’ weak points. They had enough raw power that they favored head-to-head battles. If either of them had faced Miller, there was a possibility that they could’ve been caught off guard by his prosthetic eye’s bizarre abilities and lost.

But Menou had been trained in a fighting style that could take out such strong opponents.

Back when she fought Orwell, the archbishop had nearly managed to shut Menou down with her range of abilities, but that was highly unusual. Menou excelled at both head-on battles and sneakier tactics, so it was almost unheard-of for her to get backed into a corner.

Menou had won.

“Aaaagh… Give it back… I—I need it, or I’ll…”

Miller was covering his eye socket and groaning. It wasn’t bleeding. Instead, it was Guiding Light that came out of the gaping hole. Upon seeing this, Menou was even more certain.

His body had been remade.

In order to match the prosthetic eye Menou had just pulled out, his flesh had a higher percentage of power that was rendering it less than human.

“A Vessel attachment… I see.”

Menou quietly repeated the words Sahara had used as she looked at Miller.

Through a stroke of good luck, she’d managed to capture him alive. He was begging for his fake eye back, but that was important evidence. Since Menou had a strong grasp of crestology and materialogy, she intended to analyze it later.

She knocked Miller out with a kick to the jaw.

“That takes care of that—hmm?”

Just as she was thinking about working with Ashuna to destroy the conjuring crest in the guise of a base on which they stood, the door to the room where Menou had been fighting opened. Turning around, she saw Sahara enter.

“You’re done, too?”

“Yep.”

Regardless of whether that was true or not, Menou listened closely. Judging by the sounds she heard from outside, it sounded like Ashuna and the knights were well on their way to victory, too. It might take a little longer, but their domination of the base was going smoothly.

“Well, I’ll let you handle turning this man in.”

“All right.”

Sahara nodded and moved toward Miller.

Menou took a step back. What’s going to happen next? She kept her dagger gripped in her right hand instead of putting it away in the holder around her thigh, watching closely.

Sahara raised her metal right arm and smashed Miller’s head open.

“…Heh-heh.”

I see. So that’s how it’s going to go.

She chose to murder the man instead of immobilizing him. As Menou watched, a smile spread across Sahara’s face.

“It won’t be long now until the conjuring circle activates.” Her smile was terribly twisted. “It’s a pity we weren’t able to take out a single one of the knights or Ashuna Grisarika, but…at least I managed to separate you from Akari Tokitou and Momo. You’re exhausted from battle, too. Not half bad.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You don’t look surprised.”

“Well, I had my suspicions.”

Menou had been forming this theory ever since she saw Sahara’s conjuring. The nature of its construction was definitely strange.

“That arm. It’s the same sort of thing as the prosthetic eye Miller here was using, right? Like I asked you before, is your arm all right?”

“I already told you.”

Once she’d fought Miller, her suspicion had turned to near-certainty. There were too many similarities between how the two of them spoke and acted. At first, she thought they were in collusion, but evidently, it was more than just that.

“This is my power that I gained in the eastern Wild Frontier, the Mechanical Society.” As she spat out a bitter reply, Sahara clenched her fist on her right arm. “Menou…”

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Arm, Inner Seal Conjuration—

The basic structure of her conjuring was just like that of Miller’s.

“I’m going to surpass you in this fight.”

Activate [Skill: Guiding Cannon]

After the squad led by the Guiding armored warriors was wiped out, the enemy scattered.

The knights who had separated from Ashuna were working together to defeat the rest.

“We’re lucky we were able to get help from such a skilled priestess.”

“That’s our Princess Ashuna.”

The criminals were running around frantically, clearly not getting any orders from central command. The fight had already turned into a matter of hunting down the remaining enemies.

“But we haven’t just been tricked into helping destroy Iron Chain, right?”

Their primary goal was to capture a certain woman who’d fled from the east. While they’d entered the lawless desert of the central Wild Frontier to chase her, they weren’t expecting to have to fight this so-called Iron Chain group.

They were only after one lone criminal.

A fugitive who started to turn into a conjured soldier on the front lines of the eastern Wild Frontier, but fled into the lawless area of the central Wild Frontier.

“It’s not that surprising for a confident criminal to join forces with an armed group of thugs, but still.”

“Even if we have been fooled, there’s no harm in destroying a human trafficking operation while we’re at it, right? Iron Chain is a group of scumbags who think they can kidnap people within lawful nations just because they were under Genom Cthulha.”

“Ha-ha, true. This is a good opportunity.”

Knowing that justice was on their side along with the tide of the battle, the knights laughed among themselves.

“Hopefully we still can catch the criminal we’re after and fulfill our mission, though.”

“Yeah, since she got involved with the Mechanical Society but managed to escape.”

“We can’t let her get away with it, that’s for sure.” The knight scowled as he spoke the name of the criminal they were chasing. “Not a wanted criminal like the traitorous nun Sahara.”