Itsuwa, lying on top of him, didn’t move. He couldn’t even get the limp girl off him.
As his consciousness hazed, he managed to make out Acqua of the Back as he descended upon them.
He’s…too far beyond…
Vento of the Front and Terra of the Left—their movements had at least been visible. He could slip past their attacks and counter, even damaging them in return.
But…what in the world is this guy?
Acqua of the Back.
Was he really a human like Kamijou?
This wasn’t a difference between two people. It felt like going up against an MMORPG character over a hundred levels higher than you. It wasn’t that he was using some cheat to prevent attacks from working. His abilities were just so much greater that it wasn’t even a fight. How was he supposed to beat him?
“Your right arm,” said Acqua, slowly lifting his mace overhead. “If you offer it, I will spare your life.”
“Screw…you…”
He tried to get up, but he had no energy. More and more, he was realizing his limits, but he didn’t give up, still trying to muster every ounce of strength.
But…
“I see,” said Acqua. “In that case, I’ll give you another taste of reality.”
12
Urgh…
Itsuwa had passed out for just a moment.
The first thing she noticed as her consciousness seeped back into her was the stench of metal. Next was the pain. Immediately after sensing the pain in the core of her head, a wave of agony washed over her like a tsunami. Surprisingly, her vision and hearing, normally her most reliable tools, lagged behind the most.
Faintly lit darkness.
Blue despair burying her.
Several nearby metal beams were split apart, the asphalt was shattered, and sand flew about the bridge.
A tragic scene—the nightscape she and Kamijou had just been walking through, now torn asunder.
And the feeling of a spear grip in her hand.
“?!”
Finally remembering what had happened, Itsuwa hastily tried to push herself off the ground.
Then her palm touched something slimy.
It was warm and stunk of iron enough to make her head spin. Most of all, it was colored a deep red. The fluid had a simple identity.
Fresh blood.
But Itsuwa hadn’t shed this much. Actually, if she had, she probably wouldn’t have been conscious right now. It wasn’t ink, or any other liquid, either. It was doubtlessly human blood.
Whose blood was it, then? Her mind immediately tried to reject it.
She barely needed to think.
It was Touma Kamijou.
“Awake, are you?”
Thinking calmly, Itsuwa determined Acqua of the Back, weapon in hand, should have still been standing right in front of them.
“If you are, then move. My attack will deliver far too much force. If I’m not careful about unleashing my full strength, it will cause collateral damage.”
But Itsuwa wasn’t thinking about him. Her shoulders trembled madly as she slowly, slowly turned around to look behind her.
To see what she’d been leaning against the entire time she was out.
Kamijou’s arms and legs, limp, without energy. His face was splattered with red. His eyes, neither fully open nor fully closed, were half-open, like a broken autofocus. The pain searing through him would have felt like he was being ripped apart. Despite that, he didn’t move a muscle.
Was he alive? Was he dead?
She didn’t even know that.
She was so close to him, but merely knowing whether he was alive or dead was out of her reach.
“Ah…ah…”
Her ability to make decisions shattered.
She’d forgotten entirely about Acqua of the Back, the immediate threat. Despite being in front of her enemy, she moved her hand soaked in the blood of another, clawed up the nearby scattered asphalt fragments, took out a hand towel, and removed the wallet from Kamijou’s blood-soaked pants pocket.
The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church didn’t use odd incantations or Soul Arms in their sorcery.
All they needed were common, ubiquitous life necessities.
Itsuwa rebuilt the occult vestiges hidden inside such items to try to cast healing magic that would stop the blood flowing out, close his wounds, and replenish his vitality. For the girl, the “problem” and the “battle” had focused to a single point: whether this boy lived or died.
In actuality, in spite of the chaos roiling within, her actions were surprisingly precise and swift.
She cast the healing spell in the blink of an eye.
Faint, dim orbs of light floated up from Kamijou’s limp, unmoving body. The green glow was reminiscent of fireflies. The lights squeezed into the gaps in his skin, burying themselves in the tears.
But…
Then she heard a bam!!
The healing magic she’d just built vanished without a trace, blown to smithereens.
The cause was clear.
“…Ah…”
With unsteady movements, she looked away from his face to the right hand hanging at his side.
His right hand.
The Imagine Breaker.
The unique power that nullified all unnatural phenomena, whether good or evil.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
Itsuwa screamed and rebuilt the once-destroyed healing spell. But it was futile. As soon as she cast it, the sorcery was broken—and again she built it, and again it was destroyed. Though she was using necessities you could find anywhere, if she kept wasting them like this, it wouldn’t be long before she ran out. The next thing she knew, there was nothing left to use for the spell.
“Finished?” called Acqua as Itsuwa continued her struggles.
But Itsuwa wasn’t able to give a real answer.
All she could do was keep screaming. Acqua didn’t say any more to her.
Wordlessly, he swung up his big leg, then buried it into Itsuwa’s curled back.
Crack!! came a roaring noise, and her screams stopped.
With the violent sound, the energy left her limbs. She’d been knocked out.
“Hmph.”
Without a glance for the crumpled Itsuwa, Acqua lifted his giant mace again.
His original job.
His target—the unconscious Kamijou’s right shoulder.
But he didn’t bring the mace down.
No, he hadn’t felt mercy.
No, it was Itsuwa—wounded all over, damage having accumulated to her very core, who should have been out cold—who slowly, unsteadily worked her hands, grabbed her spear, and shot up to her feet.
As though standing as a wall between him and Kamijou, curiously enough.
“Guh, ngah, oooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
Her roar, which rattled his organs, was genuine mortal desperation. She didn’t care about her chances of victory anymore. One look at her bloodshot eyes, and he could easily guess she no longer had that luxury.
She couldn’t let him die.
She couldn’t let him be taken from her.
She needed to stand up.
But that was all—she simply moved.
As she coughed up a clump of blood, a tenacious light came to her eyes that hadn’t been there before.
Acqua sighed tediously.
At the same time, the arm gripping his mace slowly expanded. His hand grasped its handle with terrible force of muscle, so tightly that even though it was made of steel, he might break it.
Acqua hadn’t acknowledged Itsuwa as an enemy.
He was simply about to crush both his obstacle and Kamijou to pieces in a single strike.
Itsuwa bit her lip.
She knew how carelessly he was treating her.
And she knew the difference in their strength was enough to call for such treatment.
“…”
Itsuwa stayed silent for a moment.
Not only did her mouth remain still—her mind was quiet. A curious blank in her heart, with nothing in it. Was it a sort of determination, or was it resignation? A moment later, when she regained all her thoughts, she turned her wobbling spear, pointing it clearly at Acqua.
It was nothing less than a declaration of war made by one about to meet her maker.
What little strength remained within her focused to a single point.
Suddenly, the silence broke, and the end came.
“Thank you, Itsuwa.”
However, Acqua’s strike was not what had shattered her will.
It was the weak hand of a certain boy laid upon her shoulder from behind.
Her slight body shivered at his few words.
She couldn’t turn around.
The hand on her shoulder had to be ripped up.
But the only thing Itsuwa saw in her mind was a gentle face.
“I feel a little better thanks to your healing spell.”
That was impossible. His Imagine Breaker destroyed all magic. Itsuwa’s healing spell couldn’t have had any effect.
The boy’s voice, too, was faint, as though wrung from his throat. His voice wavered unreliably, sounding like it could vanish at any moment.
Despite all that, those few words had a warmth to them.
She almost let herself collapse, but then she realized what the boy was thinking, and a chill ran down her spine.
Why had he stood up now?
Why did he force himself to stand up when even moving a finger was too hard?
And what did he have in mind by putting his hand on her shoulder to stop her right before leaping at Acqua of the Back?
“Wa—!!”
She didn’t have time to call out.
The boy put strength into the hand on her shoulder, then pushed her forward as though trading places with her. With her will already broken, her body, held up by mental force alone, fell limp.
“Ooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
He may have been an amateur when it came to battle, but he at least knew he couldn’t beat Acqua.
That wasn’t his goal.
Acqua of the Back said from the start that his only target was Kamijou. He said he hadn’t killed the main Amakusa team deployed nearby. If the battle reached a conclusion quickly, it would decrease casualties.
For example…
Itsuwa, directly next to him, wouldn’t have to die.
“…!!”
Itsuwa’s face distorted. All she could do was stare at his back. Clear liquid began to fall from her eyes. She shouted something, but Kamijou didn’t turn around. He remained facing forward and jumped straight toward Acqua.
“You have guts,” the man said simply.
And then, before her eyes, he unleashed a tremendous attack. He swung that giant mace, over five meters long and made of steel, horizontally, slamming mercilessly into the boy’s side. A roaring noise pierced her ears, one that you wouldn’t think came from a person. The boy, now caught between the mace and a metal bridge pillar, fell completely limp. He couldn’t even throw his fist, clenched with desperate determination, at Acqua.
He fell, this time perfectly unconscious, his body leaning over the giant mace. He looked like a futon hung out to dry. Acqua smiled.
As if to praise the defeated for his struggle.
“You have one day.”
With the unconscious boy still caught on his giant mace, he swung it slowly using one arm.
“To tear him apart now, without anesthesia, would be inhumane. Prepare him an artificial arm—or whatever you like. If he says he will give us that arm, that root cause of the disturbances, in that time, then I will spare his life.”
With that, Acqua heaved his mace with reckless ease, swinging it to the side.
A monstrous attack from one who was both God’s Right Seat and a saint.
The boy’s body, caught on the mace, flew away from the bridge with the speed of a cannonball. He passed over the railings, plunged several hundred meters straight away, collided with the dark, cold water’s surface, and then, instead of sinking, bounded back up. The incredible speed caused his body to skip off the surface again, then a third time, until he finally sunk underneath next to a cruiser, sending a bomblike blast of river water everywhere.
Splosh!! came the roaring noise a moment later.
Without checking to see if he was alive, Acqua of the Back turned away from Itsuwa.
And finally, he repeated this:
“You have one day.”
INTERLUDE ONE
What, can’t get to sleep?
Then let’s have a talk, grandpa to grandson. Hm? My stories are long and boring? Well then, they’ll put you to sleep, right?
Let’s see. Maybe I’ll tell you about the Astrologers’ Brigade.
Oh, right. Yeah, that’s what they used to call us. We still do the same thing, basically. That’s right. It’s like what you do, helping people any way you can. We’re technically a Crossist sorcerer’s society. We go out and listen to all kinds of people, then secretly use magic that helps the situation. That’s the kind of people we are.
But a long time ago, we had a lot more requests than we do now. I’m not lying! Everyone in the country relied on us. So many people would gather that we couldn’t keep them all in one place. Grandpa and the others had to take a nice, slow trip around all of Russia because of that.
Unfortunately…Well, trouble happens wherever you go.
Some troublesome people started watching us.
No, no, no, no. Just to be clear, not all Russian Catholics are bad people. It’s just that one idiot decided he’d take possession of an entire branch of the Russian Church. That’s how we ended up getting chased around by professional battle groups.
What was the idiot’s name?
What did they want to do after they captured your grandpa?
I can’t tell a brat like you something like that. Whatever way you slice it, we’re still talking about state secrets. It would be easy to say, but they won’t go easy on you, even if you’re a kid. Anyway, I can’t just go spouting it out wherever I want.
In any case, the people the Russian Catholics sent after us were very stubborn. It was a serious group of monsters made to fight things that weren’t human, like ghosts and fairies. We were only there as helpers, so we wouldn’t be able to fight them in a real battle. They were too much for us.
We decided to flee the country instead. The one fortunate thing was that they were Russian Catholics. That meant if we could get across Russia’s borders, we’d manage. Hope sure is an amazing thing. People will work as hard as they need to for a handful of straw.
But it was a terrible wasteland there. Negative fifty degrees. And dozens of kilometers to go to the border. Boy, was it tough! How do I put it—the way it felt was like a world away from pain. All we could feel was our feet growing heavy. We walked a very long time like that. Everyone walked equally—old people like your grandpa and rascals even smaller than you. And you were in your mommy’s belly at the time. That is probably why she’s strong as a bull.
What’s that? Wouldn’t the Russian Catholic people after us have had just as hard a time?
No. They were trained to move in eternal tundra like those. They were real professionals. The way they moved around was steady, like machines or puppets. Not only were they first-rate; their equipment was top-of-the-line stuff, too. They used horses made of metal. Eight-legged ones, if I remember. Ah, yes. A kind of Soul Arm—code-named Sleipnir, if I recall.
It was clear as day which of us was faster—us or the Russian Catholics.
We could just barely make out the Russian border through the blizzards. But we knew. We knew the Russian Catholic pursuers would catch us before we got there. Our hope was visible but unreachable. Their shadows were quickly getting closer, but we couldn’t do anything about it. Anyone would decide to give up then. It would have been easier to take a knee than to work hard for nothing, right? But we couldn�
��t do it. Once the border was before our eyes, we couldn’t even give up.
Hmm? What happened after that?
Well, we managed to get away, of course. If not, I wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t have been born. What part of it is bothering you?
Oh, I see, I see. You don’t know how we shook off the Russian Catholic Church’s very finest.
That one’s easy.
Someone appeared before us then.
Someone named William Orwell.
CHAPTER 2
Those Who Rise from Defeat
Flere210.
1
Noises bustled through the hospital that night.
This was the emergency care hospital on School District 22’s seventh stratum.
The small wheels of a stretcher carrying a patient clicked and clacked. Several emergency rescue workers advanced in a ring around it as the sounds ventured from outside into the building. The rescue workers’ hands pushing the stretcher passed it off to doctors and nurses, then the stretcher entered a concentrated care room before finally disappearing through the door of an operating room.
“…We’re done, somehow,” said a young male doctor some time later, watching the stretcher come out of the operating room and go back into the concentrated care room. “I can’t honestly say he’s in stable condition, but…”
The hospital hallways were lonely now that visiting hours had ended. However, several figures did populate the dimly lit passage. Many, even. Young and old, male and female, about fifty in all, leaning against walls and sitting on couches as they listened to the doctor’s words. The majority of them were adorned with torn clothes and bandages. Quite a few even had a distinct redness seeping through the white cloth.
They called themselves Amakusa, but the young doctor didn’t know what organization they were referring to, exactly. If he were to put it bluntly, they were an awfully suspicious bunch, but occasionally you’d get these sorts of throngs of delinquent boys inside if a Skill-Out leader was hospitalized. Given that, the doctor made a point not to ask any more questions.
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