CHAPTER 5
Stage Three: Uniting Humans with Astral Power
1
Nebulis Sovereignty. Liesbaden.
South Altoria terminal was nothing like it had been on any normal night. Gone were relative silence and the soft slumbering sounds of people as the deserted place blared with a piercing alarm.
“Wh-what was that, Jhin?! What was that witch?!”
“No clue. Hurry, Boss. Nene, you too.”
Cutting through the sidewalks in the dead of night, Jhin headed toward the hotel.
The rubberneckers were crowded around the lobby. Pushing past them, they ran down the hallway and headed to the emergency stairs again.
“Even if I go to back up Iska, I can’t do anything with this small handgun. Hey, Nene, you’ve got an anti-armor magnum hidden in the case, right?”
“But Jhin, that handgun was made to handle beasts—not people!”
“She looked like a beast to me. We shouldn’t think of her as human.”
She was something far outside the realm of humanity.
She wasn’t one of the astral mages, whom the Imperial forces were intimately familiar with. She was an opponent, but a new type of enemy. They had to face her as though there was no other option but to use their most lethal weapons.
“Don’t tell me she’s your secret weapon in Nebulis.”
“……”
“Hey.”
“…Stop joking around.”
At the landing of the emergency stairs, the strawberry blond stopped right in her tracks.
Sweat streamed from her forehead. The Sovereign witch was pale, hair in disarray.
“That woman… Vichyssoise Alek Hydra is related to the royal family, but she is not what the Imperial forces would call a purebred. Her blood is too ‘thin.’”
“What does that mean?”
“She was adopted. The Hydra family welcomed a child with a distant relation to the bloodline. She wants to be an inquisitor, the one who judges criminals. Anyone in the royal family knows that, but…”
“You didn’t know that monster?”
“…If I had, I would not have tried to pursue her.”
Sisbell’s knees knocked together as she leaned on the handrail, unable to go up the stairs, either from exhaustion or fear.
“…I’ve seen another monster like Vichyssoise once.”
“Huh?” Commander Mismis had automatically chimed in. “Why didn’t you tell us something that important—?”
“No! I-I had no idea. I mean, you saw…how Vichyssoise transformed. There’s no way I could have known that some run-of-the-mill person was actually hiding their true form!”
“It’s fine. We’ll look into the monsters later,” Jhin sighed. “We’re heading back to the room.”
“Eek?” Sisbell yipped, when Jhin silently scooped her up in his arms. “Wh-what do you think you’re doing?! How dare you touch me without asking for permission—”
“Can you run on your own?”
“…No.”
The girl timidly grabbed his shoulders. Rather than trying to go up the stairs on her own tired feet, it would be much faster to be carried by him.
“What do you suppose the chances are of that monster following us here?” Jhin asked.
“…It’s not impossible. There won’t be any military police who can tell it’s Vichyssoise at a glance. Even if she is caught on surveillance cameras, once she returns to human form, we can’t do anything about it.”
“Makes sense.” Jhin sprinted up the emergency stairs, skipping one step at a time. “Once we get back to the room, we’re splitting into two groups. You stay with Nene and the boss. Do not go outside under any circumstances. I’ll go back up Iska.”
“Okay… That thing is no longer one of our own. I must report to my mother as soon as possible.”
“To your mother?”
“N-nothing! Don’t mind me, and let’s hurry!”
“Then you better hold on tight.” He ran full speed up the stairs. He didn’t realize he was carrying the queen’s daughter on his back.
“The leaders of the Empire are horrible,” he said in a stifled voice. “But when it comes to dark schemes, Nebulis’s bloodline puts up a good fight.”
Isn’t it beautiful?
The night wind carried the beguiling chuckle.
“Hair like gems. A glass body.”
Had it mutated from a human…or had its disguise come undone to reveal a monster?
The thing with crystalized ruby hair opened her arms wide.
“…Are you human?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know? Tell me, guard. What makes a human?” Vichyssoise crossed her arms.
Her curvy body was feminine and faintly glowing. He could see the night sky through it behind her.
“I’ll revise my question,” he offered.
“What?”
“Were you born that way?”
The witch did not answer. Instead, she uncrossed her arms, pointing the tip of her finger at Iska.
“Little Sisbell called you Iska. Who are you?”
“A guard from an independent state.”
“‘That’s not what I meant.’ How do you like that phrase now?” The witch clad in astral flames chuckled. “Isn’t that the name of the eleventh Saint Disciple? The swordsman? The one called the Successor of the Black Steel? I’m asking whether you are that person.”
“Uh.”
“The Hydra have persisted for a century. Though it is in a period of obscurity, it still is knowledgeable about the Imperial forces.”
“…So you’re after the throne, huh?”
“How base.”
The air popped as purple flames spouted from her entire body.
“Who would quit being human for such a trivial cause?”
The flame bloomed into a flower, the embodiment of the astral energy within Vichyssoise.
“Violet Asteroid Belt.”
Hellfire swelled into a fireball large enough to swallow him whole.
The flames couldn’t be extinguished with water or ice. Because of that, the Imperial capital had burned to the ground a century ago. The fire wouldn’t disappear until the astral energy dissipated.
“Kindly burn to a crisp.”
His vision was arrested. There were buildings on both sides of the road. The mass of flames was coming closer in front of him. Behind him were the collapsed military police.
…Is she…going to burn everything in her path?!
He could dodge it.
With the speed of the flames, he just needed to get away before it made impact. That was incredibly easy. No one would have blamed him if Iska had done that.
“Doesn’t the Sovereignty mean anything to you?”
He kicked off the ground, bringing down the black astral sword to cut through it.
It made contact. It was like a balloon had burst. The astral flames popped, turning into countless embers that fluttered in the sky.
“Hah! I knew I was right about that sword!” shouted the witch. “To extinguish astral flames, the only thing you can do is counterbalance it with equal power. I wonder at the cunning behind the Imperial forces that enable this to happen.”
“Who knows?”
“But in the end, all you’ve got is a sword. You can’t do anything.” The witch thrust out her right hand.
Dozens of fireballs floated in the air and were aimed at Iska. She pointed at him. It was like a meteor shower.
“You can’t just cut one. Not with this many flames.”
“You’ll need thousands.”
“What?!”
“If you intend to stop me, that is. That was true for Alice.”
All he did was go forward .
He glanced at the trajectory of the purple fireballs and swung his astral sword. He severed the flames that were raining down toward his head and used his momentum to mow down the next attack, dodging the assault.
Iska ran along the ground without stopping for an instant. He headed for the witch in front of his eyes.
“You’re rather monstrous for a human.”
“Right back at you.”
To Iska, she was an unknown witch.
The witch herself wasn’t sure what to make of this haphazard swordsman, charging between her astral flames. He was undoubtedly going to collide with her.
…I’ve figured out something… Even though her appearance and powers are different from a human’s, she still uses human tactics.
She was like the other purebreds.
It seemed like Iska had defended against the first attack. She tried to pin him with an overpowering assault. It must have been ingrained into her that this was the best way to handle one-on-one combat.
“Praise to Mother Earth.”
Below the witch’s feet swelled a black dome, a distorted gravitational field with the appearance of a cocoon.
“It’s a gravitational storm.”
The earth rumbled. The stone pavement let out a violent screech. The surface cobwebbed, turning into gigantic fissures before his eyes.
Like the eye of a storm, the gravity was pulling in everything around it.
“I’ve got you.”
“You’re got it wrong.”
He landed on the building wall.
Right before he would have been caught by the gravity storm, Iska had leaped outside of its range. The wild beast gaped at him in disbelief.
Thump.
Kicking off the building walls in a triangular pattern, he launched himself to an edifice across the street. He brought his sword down, aiming for the top of the witch’s head—when Iska felt a bottomless pressure…on his skin.
He felt the violet glitter that emanated from the witch’s entire body.
“Gah?!”
It would have only taken two more seconds for his sword to reach her.
Though he had closed the distance between them to that point, Iska stopped in his tracks. He kicked off a streetlamp pole and changed his trajectory to land far away from the witch.
“Aha. Ha-ha-ha. You’re good. This will be great practice for crushing the Zoa and the Lou.”
Fwip . The inhuman girl turned around.
Her eyes were on fire . No exaggeration. Her eyes had hardened into jewels like her hair, pumping out astral flames.
…Are they getting stronger? …Are her powers just flooding out of her, unable to be contained?
“I’m getting tired of seeing your face. I need to find Sisbell.” The witch looked at him with upturned eyes. “I’ll go all out. Once you’ve had your fill, you will perish.”
2
Just a few minutes before Iska and Vichyssoise’s battle.
In the terminal station of South Altoria, Alice ran, out of breath, along the main road leading to the shopping district. It was the same road where she had seen Iska and Sisbell holding hands yesterday.
“What is going on? What was that explosion…?!”
Violet flames.
Against the canvas of night, the fire had raged for a moment before disappearing.
This was a nation of astral mages. Many had understood what it was at first glance. That hadn’t been gunpowder. It had been the blinding flash of astral energy.
…And that direction is…Sisbell’s hotel.
No way.
With a shiver, she recalled the explosion that had occurred during the attempt at the queen’s life in the Nebulis palace. She certainly knew there was a possibility her sister might be next.
“But Iska should be with her. And Rin is there, too…”
Iska was her sister’s guard. And Rin should have been observing the two from close by.
“The communications device’s signal is yellow…which means she’s in the middle of something.”
If it were green, she would be able to call like normal. Red meant she was in the middle of a communication. As for yellow, that meant her transmissions had been restricted.
Some circumstance must have made Rin set herself to “busy” mode and temporarily restrict communications from Alice.
“…Ugh. That means I’ve got to go and check it out for myself!”
She caught her breath and started running again.
The explosion had quieted, but the average citizens had started congregating outside. The military police were cracking down on them.
“You! Over there! Stop!”
“It’s me. Please fill me in.”
“Princess Aliceliese?!” The military police immediately saluted when they saw her face under the streetlamps and the royal chain around her wrist.
“Please hurry.”
“Y-yes, ma’am! We’re currently in the midst of our investigation. However, the units that headed to the scene have stopped responding… Reinforcements are heading there now.”
“Where were they when they cut off communication?”
“A-at the fourteenth block up ahead! And another unit—four people—went there to investigate something that seemed like an explosion of astral power. We can’t get in contact with them either.”
“…So them, too.”
It was the same for Alice. She could no longer get in contact with the queen’s agents.
On top of that, Rin had limited her communications.
“You’re the leader here? Put a halt on the reinforcements. Devote yourself to halting any civilians from going near the scene.”
“Pardon? Wh-why would you like us to do that?”
“I’m going to head over to take a look. I think that will be the fastest way to figure out what is happening. I will be able to unite with Rin there, too, I think.”
“You are going yourself, Princess?!”
“Please. This is part of the royal family’s duties. I will just take a quick look around.” Alice responded with a reserved smile.
…Seriously? Use your brain… If you were with me, you would just get in the way of my astral powers. You wouldn’t want that, right?
She imagined the worst-case scenario.
If this was the culprit behind the coup… If they were attacking Sisbell with that explosion…then she would be pursued by the assailant.
“H-however…”
“I will cooperate. Give me ten minutes? If you do not hear back from me within that time, then please send in reinforcements.”
“…All right. I agree to those conditions. Please be careful.”
“Thank you. Please be safe.” She started sprinting again without waiting for a response.
Ten minutes wasn’t that short. In mock battles between astral mages, there were records of matches being settled, on average, in two minutes. It was ample time to defeat the culprit once she found them.
“It was over here, right? Rin? Rin? If you’re here, answer me!”
The fourteenth block.
There wasn’t much light in the alleys between old buildings. She went in deeper.
Alice picked up the smell of cinders.
“…Are the flames still smoldering?”
“Lady Alice! You’re safe!”
From a secluded path, a woman in a suit jogged up to her. She had black hair, in her mid-twenties.
Alice noticed her collar. She wore a custom lapel pin of a lily coat of arms that had a chain hanging off it. It was worn by all the queen’s agents.
“We had found Lady Sisbell! But the enemy attack… Though we tried to deal with it, the police were taken hostage and Lady Sisbell was wounded.”
“Continue.”
“We do not have time. I will lead you there. Follow me, Lady Alice!”
“Yes.” Alice didn’t move.
When the agent realized the princess was not following her into the darkness, she turned around.
“…Lady Alice?”
“I have something I’d like to ask you.”
“We are in a race against time! While we are here—”
“Who are you?”
The woman in the suit went tight-lipped.
Alice crossed her arms on the spot. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize every soldier’s face? I’m sad if I’ve made that impression.”
“……”
“When the queen interviews her agents, it is my role to be present. I haven’t forgotten a single name or face that has served the House of Lou.”
The woman had disguised herself as a Lou agent. Though Alice did not recognize her, she could guess her affiliation and goal.
…Did she want to drag me into a narrow alleyway…and attack me by surprise? The other option, I suppose, was to make me spit out Sisbell’s location.
Or maybe it was both.
“I should thank you. I learned something,” she said with a large helping of satire. “Sisbell is still safe. If you had her captured, you wouldn’t have turned to me. You would have focused on evading the eyes of the police and disappeared, right?”
“……”
“Retreat. It’s only customary for a buffoon to make their escape once their intentions have been revealed.”
“Very insightful, princess.” The lapel pin whizzed through the air.
She had torn off the proof of loyalty from her suit collar. That act signaled her disloyalty for the current queen.
“You are cleverer than they say, and intuitive. And beautiful.”
“Thank you. But I don’t want your flattery. I’d like you to get out of the way.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to turn you down. Princess! En garde!” The woman’s suit opened.
The small muzzle of a handgun was turned toward Alice.
“Huh, a gun.”
Really now? Alice’s ice wall could repel an onslaught from an entire Imperial unit.
A handgun didn’t strike any fear in her. Any Sovereign subject would know that. In that case, was this person aiming for something else? But what else was there? Was it a diversion? A trap?
This momentary hesitation dulled Alice’s judgment.
“Farewell, princess.”
The bullet grazed Alice’s side.
By the time she realized that it was no ordinary bullet and that the rubber pellet had hit a detonator behind her, three flashes of light had already gone off.
Beep, beep, beep. The signals sounded off in succession.
“—Gh! No way!”
It was a trio of chained explosions.
The plastic explosives attached to three buildings around her destroyed the walls and the stone pavement, blowing them to smithereens. A thick cloud of dust enshrouded the place.
Between the ribbons of smoke, she could see everything had been blown away, other than the steel bars hanging off the structures.
“A trap to blow the military police to bits. I never thought I’d be able to use it against the Founder’s bloodline.”
The streetlamps had been decimated. With the heaping pile of rubble in front of her, the woman put away her gun.
“Vi is continuing her pursuit of the youngest princess… She’s late. How long is that going to take? All she needs to do is handle the guards.”
She turned around. As she tried to start walking, her feet stopped.
It wasn’t her feet… It was her shoes . She couldn’t bring up the front of her foot or her heel. Her shoes were stuck to the stone pavement, as though they had been glued down by some kind of adhesive.
White crystals. A thin sheet of ice had frozen her soles right to the stone pavement.
“A dirty trick you used there.”
“Ice?! But…?”
The mountain of wreckage came crashing down. The assassin could not turn around. She realized everything that was happening by sound alone.
It was unbelievable.
A close-range explosion couldn’t have given enough time for the self-defense functions of astral energy to trigger. It wasn’t invincible.
Even if it had sensed its host was in danger, it would have needed to perceive the explosion as a threat before taking on defensive action, at which point Alice would have already been engulfed by the blast.
“Phew. I was this close to being crushed.”
The colossal icicle sent several hundred pounds of steel rubble flying. Below it, Alice stood up, completely unharmed.
“…You defended yourself in a split second?!”
“I’ve been on the receiving end of the Imperial forces for a while now. I assume you know what they call me.”
“Ah!”
The Ice Calamity Witch. Among the purebreds who appeared in the battlefield, she was the one the Empire saw as the biggest threat because…they could not defeat her.
Her ice wall stopped bombardments and her chill could freeze the very atmosphere until it was like poisonous gas. Even facing a large minefield, she could freeze the earth and render them inactive.
Flame, lightning, or even wind didn’t have the defensive ability to match hers. Only the class of ice power could have automatic self-defense capabilities. That was the reason why Queen Nebulis IIX allowed her precious daughter to head to the frontline alone.
“But that was a paper-thin margin.”
Turning her eyes away from the captured assassin, Alice looked at the buildings standing to the left, right, and back of her.
The building walls glittered beautifully with ice.
On the ones weakened from the blast, there were thick ice chunks coating the foundations and supporting them. Had the ice not been there, the row of dated buildings would have collapsed.
“You’re the worst.”
Alice turned around again, her eyes brimming with glacial fury.
“It would’ve been a disaster had the buildings fallen. How many victims would there have been?”
“Don’t tell me…you prevented them from coming down in addition to protecting yourself… All within seconds of the explosion…” The assassin’s shoulders trembled.
She was the ultimate weapon of the House of Lou. They had waited for a time when Alice was absent to implement the assassination plan.
They should never have made an enemy out of her. They couldn’t hope to match her in battle.
“I suppose that’s enough.”
The lumps of ice creaked.
Unable to do anything about it, the assassin was encapsulated in a pillar of ice. Shrieking from within the cage of icicles, her voice never made it outside.
“I regret even speaking to you. You may talk all you want in your cell.” Alice turned her back to the ice column.
She had lost all interest in this would-be assassin. There was another assailant she was tracking.
…That violet flash didn’t come from a little plastic explosive… That explosion occurred because of astral power.
She still hadn’t gotten a response from Rin. She had to be somewhere close by. She should have arrived at the scene before Alice. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have purposefully set her communications device to restricted settings.
“Rin! Just where are—?”
There was a roar blasting through the radius, the loudest one of the evening.
3
“I’m getting tired of seeing your face.”
Astral flames were created when the energy was compressed, manifesting as a substance.
The violet embers fluttered through the night sky, beautiful like butterflies.
“Burst.”
…They turned into a rain of fire, pouring down on Iska’s head.
Even though each of them was the size of a fingernail, they were blazing motes of pure energy. If they grazed his clothing, he would have immediately caught fire. The flames would have been inextinguishable.
…I can’t be careless enough to let it touch a single hair on my head.
…I guess this is as brutal as Kissing’s thorns!
He leaped back.
Flames touched down on the pavement. The rock surface instantly liquified.
“Tsk!” He couldn’t dodge all of them.
He swept away embers in his path with the tip of his sword, swiveling around. He used his right leg as a pivot to twist his body like a top and cut down the flames behind him.
“Oh, how frightening. Do you have eyes on the back of your head?” She manipulated gravity.
Before his eyes was Vichyssoise, rising up into the air. Her transparent body had practically melted into the night sky from Iska’s perspective.
He had let her escape.
Vichyssoise was already higher up than the buildings.
…She got me… She wasn’t actually trying to catch me with the astral flames. She used a wide-range attack to get me to back off.
The violet rain subsided.
“What nice eyes—overflowing with tension and hostility. You really do get it .” The witch laughed loudly.
Iska didn’t want to let her escape. She had seen through that.
“I’d like Sisbell to feel despair as she watches from her hiding spot. I’ll crush you with my trump card… The ultimate cannon, the Magic Shot of Corpses.”
A black spot, even darker than night, was created between the witch’s outstretched hands. A globe that rejected all light.
…What is that? …It’s too black. It’s not reflecting any light at all!
Was that astral power?
Pure black consumed all light. And this witch’s astral power was gravity.
If he correctly identified what this sphere of darkness was…
“Not a black hole!”
“Correct. It’s too late now.”
A black hole. It was born from the death of a star, the ultimate gravitational field that could absorb even light.
Crack. The fragments of stone pavement under Iska’s feet audibly crumbled to pieces. They were sucked in toward the gaping dot in the night sky.
“…You’re planning on sucking up all the rubble on the ground?!”
They flew from earth to sky.
The streetlamp poles bowed. It was going to suck up everything—from the cans rolling along the pavement, the small cars that had been illicitly abandoned, and even fragments of buildings that had crumbled from the earlier blast.
He didn’t think she would stop there.
“The black hole can meddle with any inorganic substance. See for yourself. The corpses on the ground are growing.”
She meant the ruins and rubble.
Hundreds of pieces of steel larger than Iska were pulled into the sky toward a single point, an amalgamation of wreckage that rivaled a building in size.
“A third of an ounce—” called down the beguiling voice of an inhuman girl. “I wonder if you know what weighs a third of an ounce? It’s about the weight of a single coin.”
“……”
“The answer is a bullet.”
Just a third of an ounce. Just one was enough to send a human or even a large beast to the ground.
If a building-sized mass of debris was forming in the air…
“Isn’t it lovely? No one has ever seen a bullet this big, which means no one knows how to defend against it either.” Vichyssoise turned to look up at the sky with her arms outstretched.
She gathered fragments of rubble and pebbles.
“Magic Shot of Corpses . Fire.”
A six-thousand-ton bullet.
There was enough steel to construct an entirely new building. The wreckage from the ground had condensed near the black hole, forming a warped sphere.
Echoing through the fourteenth district was not a sound, but the destructive shockwave.
The mass descended from the sky. Its diameter was about the size of the alley that Iska was standing in. That meant he couldn’t cut it with his astral sword. There wasn’t even enough time for the word “dodge” to enter Iska’s head.
“Uhhh?!”
An invisible impact knocked him down and blew Iska away.
His back hit a concrete wall. He blacked out for a few seconds. When he came to his senses a moment later, the stone pavement was gone.
There was just a crater carved out like a big bowl.
…Was that…wind pressure? …It wasn’t even a direct attack. The aftershock blew me away…!
He wiped his cut lip.
From within the tremendous dust cloud, he could see his astral swords had been scattered onto the ground.
…I trained to not let go of my swords even while unconscious… I guess this is the first time I’ve ever dropped them.
That was how large of an impact it had been.
On top of that, it hadn’t been the force of the bullet. This had happened from the wind pressure alone. Just by looking at the crater below his eyes, he could tell it rivaled the pulverizing force of an Imperial missile.
“How pitiful.” From the air, the witch laughed scornfully as Iska tried to get up from the building wall. The black hole was still there.
“So that didn’t crush you. How unfortunate that I’ll need to fire a second bullet.”
“……Wonderful.”
He picked up his swords.
He contorted his face from the sharp pain in his back. “I’m glad I scraped by with minor injuries from the first one.”
In comparison to the force of the Magic Shot of Corpses, a human was too light . He had been helpless, knocked back by the wind pressure that had ended up saving his life.
“Was that a bluff?” The witch was calm as ever. “Doesn’t look minor to me. Doesn’t look like you scraped by either. Nothing ‘wonderful’ about it. You’re going to experience that pain again.”
“I saw through your trick.”
He exhaled, tasting blood. Through the cloud of dust, he thrust out the point of his astral sword.
“You’re stingy. Which makes you soft, Vichyssoise!”
“Fire.”
It was the second shot. The rubble rocketed toward the ground.
However, he saw something this time.
Just as a bullet was fired at the trigger of a gun, her weapon unleashed its attack when her astral light flashed.
Iska leaped. As soon as the magic shot was fired, he swept up his astral sword faster than the witch could see.
It was like a building was coming down on him.
He launched himself up, bringing down his sword at the approaching magic shot.
“Hah!” With his sword thrust forward, Iska landed on the projectile—using it as midair footing.
“Whaa?!” A shriek escaped the witch’s lips.
She had managed to shed her emotional capacity for fear upon taking on this monstrous form, but it started to bubble within her again. That was because she had realized what the Imperial swordsman had been after.
He could reach her. The Imperial swordsman’s blade had a means of reaching the witch, high in the night sky.
“Why, you insolent little—!”
A third shot. A fourth.
Compared to the first bullet, these were small and slow. That was because the first shot was intended to be a one-hit kill. She hadn’t originally assumed she would need to fire a second one.
…The subsequent ones are remnants of the previous attack, after all… There isn’t much rubble left to become a bullet. That’s why it can’t pick up speed.
She should have used up all the rubble for her first shot. Even if she had missed making a direct hit, she should have put enough power into the aftereffect to vaporize and kill him.
She was too late.
He kicked off the bullet he was riding on, thrusting his sword down toward the third attack. He sunk his blade into the fragments of the building to anchor himself.
Then he soared. He jumped past the fourth magic shot, toward the witch floating in the sky.
“Ha-ha! So you’ve come to let yourself burn in the astral flames!”
Looking down on Iska as he leaped up, Vichyssoise thrust her hand out. The intense violet in her palm flared in the night sky.
“Now, astral flames—”
“Release.”
Flame collided with flame, canceling each other out.
“…What?”
She couldn’t wrap her head around what had happened…when her attack had been directly offset by the astral flames created by Iska’s astral sword.
Namely, the white one.
At Iska’s command, he could release the astral powers that the black blade had extinguished.
“……What…did…you do…?”
Vichyssoise realized…that she had been defeated.
Her astral flames had been extinguished. Her secret weapon had been turned around and used as footing.
“You dare defy the Hydra? You…better sleep with one eye open……! You have no idea…there are ‘monsters’ more terrifying than me —”
The sword flashed.
Iska’s blade lacerated the witch’s transparent flesh.
Particles of light burst from her wounds, not blood.
Out of her skin spilled a spray of minute lights, glittering with astral energy.
“………”
Vichyssoise was starting to descend. Since she was unconscious, there was nothing to break her fall. She would hit the bedrock without even being able to right herself.
“Rin.”
“Hush.”
An earth golem broke her fall. A hand three yards wide caught the witch.
“I don’t intend to have you bossing me around.”
The girl with the honey-brown hair looked up at Iska as he fell to the ground.
“I’m annoyed that you noticed me…especially an Imperial swordsman like you. I was in a cold sweat, but it seems you took down this monster in the end.”
“? What? Ouch!”
Thunk. After more than twenty yards of free-falling, Iska hit the stone pavement.
The earth golem stood next to him without a single word.
“What about me?! Shouldn’t you have caught me, as well? I was convinced the golem would reach out for me, too!”
“Tsk. You survived.”
“…Hey. Clicking your tongue at me isn’t…”
“Don’t get any strange ideas. On top of you and Lady Alice being enemies, I have no obligations to you… Does it look like I caught her gently?”
The golem cradled the witch. Well, not exactly. It was squeezing her as firmly as it could to keep her restrained. She wouldn’t be able to run away, even when she regained consciousness.
“Did you want me to catch you?”
“…Actually, I think I’m fine.”
“Hm.” Alice’s attendant scowled.
Before her gaze, the witch who had released all her astral energy was once again returning to human form.
Her assassin clothes had burned away. Though hidden by the golem’s hands, she was stark naked.
“House Hydra’s inquisitor. As far as I am aware, she was a human who could manipulate gravity… I cannot imagine her monstrous form. Is she human or genuinely a monster?”
“Are you sure you’re allowed to tell me that stuff?”
“I’m talking to myself. I wasn’t telling you anything.” She turned her face away to snub him. “…I haven’t lied. I cannot believe what I saw. If I don’t tell myself what it was, I will end up doubting my own eyes.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. With everything else going on.”
The alley was unrecognizable.
The concrete walls had been broken to smithereens. There wasn’t a single window remaining in range. The fused rubble showed evidence of getting scorched by astral flames.
“We have a difference in opinion.” Rin looked indecisive. “It would have been ideal to have evidence that she acted on behalf of the House of Hydra—not evidence of her being a monster.”
“You kept watch over me because that’s what you wanted?”
“No. Ultimately, Lady Alice had simply ordered me to keep an eye on Lady Sisbell. With one of our own after Lady Sisbell’s life, we could not leave things to Imperial forces.”
“…I see. Seems like Alice.”
A sigh escaped his lips, and even he did not know the emotion behind it.
“I think I’ve come to understand that relations within Nebulis are complicated.”
Alice had wanted to save her sister.
On the other hand, Sisbell was suspicious of the possibility that her sister was secretly working with Lord Mask. That was exactly why Alice couldn’t openly offer her a hand.
“Anyway—hm? What is this powder?”
Rin raised her face.
Fine dust was falling on her head. She pinched it dubiously between her fingertips and turned to look behind her as though she had sensed something. She froze in place.
Debris was sprinkling down on them. A terrifying crack had formed in an aged building. When she looked closely, the whole building was leaning over.
“What’s happening?! The building is going to collapse! Rin! Support it with the golem!”
“W-wait a second! I don’t have enough time to create one! You do something, Imperial swordsman! This stuff is—”
“Freeze.”
Ice vines twined around it, closing the fissure. The wall of ice jutted out of the ground, supporting the half-crumbled building, keeping it in place.
Whose power had that been? Everyone knew the answer to that question.
“Lady Alice!” Rin promptly bowed to her lady, who had come running from beyond the building. “Please look! I have restrained Lady Sisbell’s assassin. Just me! I did this!”
“Liar!”
“…Haa…ah…s-seriously…what in the world happened?” Alice’s glossy, golden hair whipped around. Her voice was faint like she had sprinted all the way here.
“I want to know about the assassin…and about that earlier blast… Why are you here, Iska? Where is my sister?”
“She’s being protected by my unit. It’s just—”
The stomping footsteps approaching them had to be the military police’s reinforcements.
“I’ll be in hot water if they find me, so I’m heading out. I’m leaving her in your hands.”
“W-wait right there, Iska! Her? …Is that Vichyssoise?!” Alice’s throat quivered in shock when she saw the girl captured by Rin’s golem. “She’s part of the House of Hydra. Which means the one who attacked my mother…”
“That conflict hasn’t got anything to do with me. She tried attacking Sisbell, so I fought to protect her. That’s all,” Iska said.
“…Yes. That’s how it is.” Alice looked bitterly at the witch.
Her eyes were opened wide. “Wait, Iska. I’ve made a terrible realization.”
“Huh?”
“Why is she naked? That’s an issue I cannot overlook!”
“That’s what you’re concerned about?!”
Vichyssoise had been wearing clothes to hide her form, which had been burned to a crisp by the astral flames. Even her flesh had changed. There was no way Alice would have been able to imagine Vichyssoise in that form.
“…I cannot turn a blind eye. Okay, Iska. I’ve got something to say to you.” Alice looked at him, seeming resolved. “If I put my mind to it, I’d look way more amazing than Vichyssoise when stripped down!”
“What do you mean if you put your mind to it ?!”
“Lady Alice, are you mad?!”
Iska and Rin caught themselves yelling at the same time. Alice was bright red in the face and breathing haggardly.
“B-but it’s important. I don’t want to lose in front of you…though that was a little embarrassing.”
“…I’m getting secondhand embarrassment.”
“W-whatever! Go back to guarding Sisbell!”
“You’re the one who stopped me !”
Yelled at by the enemy princess, Iska retreated down alleyways that rang from the alarm.
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