4_Chapter 4_ Amakusa-Style

CHAPTER 4 Amakusa-Style Amakusa_Style_Crossist_Church. 1 The Church of Orsola consisted of seven sanctuaries. Each of them was charged with one of the seven sacraments of Crossism. They weren’t all the same size, instead varying in size and money spent depending on the frequency and importance of the sacrament. Orsola and the others were currently in the Church of Matrimony, which concerned wedding ceremonies. It was planned to receive the most in the way of finances, so the building was gigantic as well. Second largest was the Church of Final Anointment, which related to funeral proceedings; others with important religious significance, such as the Church of Holy Orders and the Church of Confirmation, followed, but nevertheless they couldn’t expect much patronage from general visitors such as Kamijou, and so were the smallest ones. These small buildings were artfully adorned with statues, paintings, and stained-glass windows—it looked like they were aiming for additional income as a halfway art exhibit or museum. That was as much info as the mobile version of its homepage on his phone could tell him. It was rather strange to see a website built by those on the occult side for their own choice, but maybe they wanted it to function as a sightseeing guide as well—the maps of its planned completion and even of the inside being made public could have been a money grab…though of course, it was only the places they could show to visitors. “Damn” Kamijou swept up Orsola into his arms and dove out the Church of Matrimony’s back door. Not a hint of plant life greeted them as he stepped onto the perfectly flat stone ground. Armed sisters appeared from the doorway soon after. He had waited for the very moment the dozens of Amakusa members clashed face-first with the Roman sisters to take Orsola and flee the Church of Matrimony. He didn’t want to be separated from Index and the others if he could help it, but they were now divided by a human wave, so there was nothing he could do. As he ran, he looked at Orsola’s face and said, “Sorry I was late! Are you all right?!” “…Yes. This much is really nothing at all.” Her clothing was cut up badly; the fasteners and other metal parts of it were broken, looking like something had crushed them in its teeth. She barely moved at all—just swayed a little—and held on to him tightly, which was all he needed to deduce how badly hurt she was. But although her face held exhaustion, pain was nowhere to be found. She looked as though she were about to burst into tears. With her hands up around his neck, she looked up at him like a child who had finally found her parents. Jeez, what the hell! It was so easy—I had a reason to fight right here. Kamijou held on to her as he continued his run. However large the Church of Matrimony may have been, fighting against so many people inside it would have been suicidal. Strength wasn’t the issue—it would be the human flood washing over him. And he was just a high school kid in the first place. He could win a one-on-one fight; one-on-two was dubious. Any more than that and he wouldn’t think twice about running. That was the extent of his ability. But. But just because he wouldn’t think twice about running didn’t mean he had been defeated. “Hm…” Before the countless hands of his pursuers could reach his back, Amakusa men and women, swords in hand, leaped down from the church’s roof. Their blades blocked the Roman Orthodox weaponry close to impaling his body, and the brutal follow-up kick sent the front line of black-garbed sisters flying. With the whoosh of a wave retreating, a portion of the Roman Orthodox sisters moved as a single creature and surrounded the Amakusa members. Thanks a bunch…! He ran farther, kicking an empty can left by a construction worker with his heel into the air. Of course, the effects of launching something like that were far from mowing down the sisters in black. But when something flew through the corner of their eyes, they’d look that way whether they wanted to or not. “?!” As soon as they noticed the sisters’ attention waver, the Amakusa members cut through the encirclement. They gave Kamijou a quick bow, then each of them began to flee as well. He didn’t have time to see that through to the end. The weapons wielded by the sisters may have been heavy, but they couldn’t have been heavier than a human body. To close the slight distance that formed between them, the Roman Orthodox killers ran after Kamijou again. A sister closed in on him, swinging a lit torch. A softball-sized rock of ice came flying at him from behind her. He continued to dodge them, holding Orsola close. He soon spotted metal construction-pipe scaffolding surrounding the long and thin Church of Confirmation, which was behind the Church of Matrimony, and dashed up in bounds. He used the slanted rungs to run up to the second floor. The torch-holding sister carelessly came after him—he kicked her down to the ground with his right foot. A moment later, another sister somehow jumped from the ground up to where he was with a single leap; as she set foot on the unstable scaffolding, Kamijou swept her legs out and sent her tumbling back down. “—” The eyes of dozens of sisters on the ground stared up at him on the scaffolding, observing him mechanically. They would have realized by now. They could surround him with dozens of people and attack all at once—they wouldn’t have anywhere to run then. But if he found a place where they needed to fight one-on-one, he could pick out an escape route. The metal pipes making up the scaffolding he stood on were long, thin, and unstable, so the sisters couldn’t deliver a unified attack from all directions. If they were to follow him up the narrow scaffolding, they would inevitably need to get in a neat single-file line. In fact, if that many people all ran onto the scaffolding, it would buckle under their weight and collapse. Unless they were prepared to die, they couldn’t use their numbers to their advantage because of the sacrifice it might require. The sisters in jet-black pondered on what that meant… …and then without exchanging a single word, their opinions aligned, and they all readied their weapons, still on the ground. From staffs, axes, crosses, and Bibles to a giant clock hand you might use on a clock tower—the tips of all these myriad weapons pointed straight over their heads to where Kamijou was. Their blades shone in all the colors of the rainbow—red, blue, yellow, green, purple, brown, white, gold. Agh…shit…?! Kamijou hoisted the unconscious Orsola’s body again in his arms, then began a mad dash farther up the metal pipe scaffolding. As he did so, feathers of brilliantly colored light flew at him one after the other. The shining weapons were like feather pens with arrowheads on their tips. In the blink of an eye they were speeding toward where Kamijou was sprinting with Orsola, trying to shoot right through them. The storm of feathers of light destroyed the outer wall of the church and the scaffolding alike without mercy. As soon as he heard the huge clank and the scaffolding swung, he realized they hadn’t been shooting at him—they’d been going after the base of the scaffolding. They certainly didn’t seem to care about Orsola’s safety. They just knew they needed to keep her alive—as long as her brain and heart were working, they probably didn’t care what state she was in. The entire scaffolding they were running on tilted over like a sinking ship. Of course, jumping to the ground would land him right in the middle of the dozens of sisters. “Ugh, aahh?!” He gave a meaningless shout. Because the scaffolding was tipping over, his path was getting steeper and steeper. It was getting closer to vertical with each passing moment. Kamijou ran through it. The two-story scaffolding, at some point, had reached up to the roof of the three-story church. He tightened his arms around Orsola and jumped with all his might. Just when his feet landed on the marble church roof, the coffin of metal pipes and parts clattered to the ground in a heap. His spine chilled at the sight of the scaffolding he was just on having collapsed, then finally stopped in place, still holding Orsola, and took a deep breath. “A-are you all right?” she asked anxiously up at him, perhaps feeling like a heavy burden to him. “Yeah, no problem,” he replied, waving it off, looking at how Orsola was doing again. Her habit was torn all over thanks to the countless violent acts, her clothing fasteners were broken, and her skirt fabric was in shambles. Under normal circumstances the sight might have been rather arousing, but her thighs were black and blue with bruises like a rotten fruit, the discoloration of internal bleeding pushing any trace of that thought out of his mind. …Damn it. He gritted his teeth, not saying anything aloud but yelling inwardly. Not even a grown man could have stood up against your numbers, and you all ganged up on Orsola and beat her up like this? Agnes Sanctis He really wanted to charge into the enemy line right this instant, but Orsola worried him more. He needed to do some quick first aid and let her rest somewhere, he thought urgently. But there wasn’t any calming down in this place. They moved away from the edge of the roof toward the middle to avoid as many projectiles as they could, coming to a spot where the building walls would block seeing him from any angle below. “Which means…” He let Orsola down out of his arms onto the under-construction roof, and then grabbed a nearby box of construction tools with his hands… …and bam The next moment, with a tremendous noise, three sisters came jumping up from the ground. Kamijou swung the box of construction tools, heavy enough to make him feel like the one being swung around. It struck one of the three sisters, who lost her balance and fell to the ground. The other two landed on the roof without a sound, one readying her giant hour hand and one her giant minute hand. Each had bandages around the base, maybe to let them grip it. He heard the rest of them, who didn’t have such jumping abilities, running up the stairs inside the building to get to the roof, right below him. He felt like he was at a disadvantage, so he looked around with his eyes only, without moving his neck, for an escape route…and then he saw the girl wearing a white habit, running through the middle of the vast church site that could be viewed in its entirety from the rooftops. Behind her were likewise dozens of sisters clad in jet-black. But his bird’s-eye view told him how hopeless her situation was. There was another group of sisters closing in farther along her escape path. She must not have realized there were enemies in that direction as well. If she kept going, she would have to run straight into them. “Index” he shouted unthinkingly—and at that, the two sisters jumped at him from the left and right, giant clock hands at the ready. His voice didn’t reach the girl running along the ground. 2 Between the Church of Matrimony and the Church of Baptism, Saiji Tatemiya brandished his sword. Because the Church of Baptism was positioned diagonally from the Church of Matrimony, it created a triangular courtyard. Until he was the last one there, he brandished his sword. After the members of Amakusa had bought time at first to let Orsola escape, now Tatemiya was buying time for the rest of Amakusa to escape the Church of Matrimony. Dozens of his peers were currently scattered around, fighting. Here and there on the polished stone courtyard without a hint of greenery, there were pedestal-looking things for sculptures to go on top. Once the church was finished, there would probably be an orderly line of angels, famous religious figures, and saints, but right now they just radiated emptiness. It felt like ruins after heretics had attacked and destroyed every piece of religious art here. Saiji Tatemiya didn’t fight while running, like Touma Kamijou did. That was because he was skillfully throwing off the timing of the enemies’ attacks. He would never launch into a full assault, nor resign himself to complete defense—he maintained a position right in between. As soon as the sisters came forward to attack, Tatemiya would take just one step forward. The sisters would then back off and regroup, and in that moment, Tatemiya would take just one step back. With their predictions gone wrong and the wind naturally taken out of the enemy group’s sails, their pace would be thrown off for just a moment. Tatemiya aimed for that moment and mercilessly brandished his sword. When the sisters would panic and move to defend, his heavy sword would knock an enemy—and her defense—way back. Tatemiya wouldn’t follow up. After pulling out one attack, he would patiently move back. By neither attacking nor defending, but keeping a precarious balance between the two, he purposely erected an invisible wall—a state of deadlock—that shouldn’t have been there originally. Though I’m not gonna be able to rely on this tactic for very long…, Tatemiya thought, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, catching his comrades brandishing their own swords out of the corner of his eye. He pretended to give a smile of superiority, but on the inside he was nervous. Right now, all he was doing was taking advantage of the fact that the sisters were able to analyze the situation, and that they had some leeway to work with. If they decided to fight to the death, lost their minds’ balance, and came at him in a full-blown assault, prepared for friendly fire and mutual kills, Tatemiya’s plan would come crumbling down. Whether it was attack or defense, the moment the balance tipped toward either of those sides would be the moment his psychological wall would collapse and he’d be swallowed up in the giant wave. It was like fishing, he thought as he brandished his sword. If he recklessly cast his line into the water, the fish would just tear apart the string and run away. If he wanted to fish well, he needed to go along with the fish’s movements to a certain extent, let them play with it, and make them think they had a chance of winning. And then he heard the scampering of footsteps. “More of them?!” Tatemiya was startled, but the footsteps weren’t coming after him. The courtyard he was fighting in was between the Church of Matrimony and the diagonally positioned Church of Baptism, so it was a triangular space. And at the top of the triangle, in the slight gap between the two churches, there was the English Puritan sister wearing the white habit. She seemed to have managed to flee from the Roman Orthodox sisters, but she must have run into a group coming from the other direction. Well over twice the number of enemies as Tatemiya was facing were surrounding her, blocking any movement. “Shit. Don’t go making me look bad, damn it!” Tatemiya hurriedly tried to back her up, but the dozens of sisters surrounding her all moved like a single creature and formed a human wall. From their point of view, every time an enemy died, the people they split off to do so would move to reinforce the rest. They were fighting against a group of stragglers, which was why they probably wanted to finish this battle as quickly as possible. Tatemiya glared at the sisters, and they glared back. Behind them, Index was being swallowed by a wave of countless people, and she was getting harder and harder to see. “Don’t…underestimate—” At the very moment Tatemiya caught his breath to resort to a bold move and swung his sword back into position… …he suddenly heard a man’s voice coming to him from overhead. “Stop! You can’t get close to her right now” Right when Tatemiya looked up, a second-story window of the Church of Baptism exploded outward with flames. A Roman Orthodox sister came flying out of the broken window like a bullet. She barely managed to coil her feet to kill some of the impact from landing, but that was all she could do. She lost consciousness and rolled over onto the ground. In the window, holding a sword of flame, was Stiyl Magnus. He spoke. “It depends on the situation, but right now she’s strongest when she’s alone. If we get close to her, it will sap her strength. You don’t want to get caught in something like this, either, do you?” “What?” said Tatemiya dubiously, when… Boom came an explosion from near Index. Dozens, if not hundreds of people were completely surrounding her, leaving not a single gap—and then he saw Index. Meaning a portion of their siege had fallen. One of the corners of the thick C-shaped crowd of people was struck by an unseen power and completely blown away. It seemed to have landed a direct hit on about ten of the sisters, but one of them rolled all the way to Tatemiya’s feet, dozens of meters away. At the sight of their ally flying over their heads like a rag doll, even the sisters facing Tatemiya turned around to Index. Thud came another invisible burst, sending a handful of sisters flying. “…What the hell is that?” Tatemiya looked at the sister at his feet. Her face was a portrait of despair; her body curled up, stuck in the fetal position. And though she was unconscious, she trembled violently as if experiencing a night terror. Closer inspection revealed that her leg muscles had snapped apart. Her explosive flight had been performed by her own feet—as though some survival or defense instinct had gone berserk in an attempt to flee from Index’s side even at the cost of ignoring her body’s physical limits. Stiyl jumped down from the second story and landed right next to Tatemiya with a clap. “You are Crossist as well, so you should understand. Crossist ceremonies each have their own weaknesses—though perhaps I should call them contradictions. These weaknesses, or contradictions, are what caused so many Crossist sects to be created—and all of them have formed even more weaknesses and contradictions. It’s basically what sets Crossism apart from the rest.” “…What does that have to do with this?” Tatemiya waved the tip of his giant sword a bit, measuring his distance to the sisters. “Floating in that area is the wisdom of all the world—all the knowledge of the 103,000 grimoires. She’s using it to denounce the contradictions in Crossism and its teachings. The voice of magic’s bane—Sheol Fear. For those working under the Crossist operating system, the contradictions in their faith are like security holes. Sheol Fear, which pierces precisely through them, is truly their bane. It causes the hearer’s personality to fall apart like a jigsaw puzzle.” However, it would have no effect on those unrelated to Crossism, and grimoire authors like Aureolus would construct unique barriers so that the original copy wouldn’t corrupt their minds. Of course, there were extremely few people in the world who could write an original copy and not be physically destroyed by it. “Grimoires don’t exist solely to be read. She can draw out the full power of grimoires even without magic using things like spell interception or Sheol Fear. There is probably no better candidate to be a library of grimoires than her.” Before the dazed sisters could re-form their ranks, Stiyl and Tatemiya stormed in. Stiyl’s flame sword exploded, and the sisters pressed flat to the ground by the waves were skillfully knocked unconscious one by one by Tatemiya. Meanwhile, a little farther away, Index’s casual whisperings were blasting tons of the sisters surrounding her all over the place. Tatemiya was half-impressed and half-amazed. “With a hidden ball trick like that, why didn’t she use it right from the start? And if she’d used it against us, she could’ve mowed us all down!” “It’s a delicate attack, and there are frustrating limitations. Religious brainwashing is easier to pull off on a group all at once than on an individual basis. You understand that, right? Sheol Fear uses what they call group mentality in science to break through the barriers of their minds and use them as footholds.” Stiyl caused his flame sword to burst, repelling the sisters edging toward him. One of them who tried to time her attack came away with a scalding burn on her cheek and quickly jumped away. “The problem with activating Sheol Fear is that it requires a certain level of purity in their group mentality. It’s easy to cast on a homogenous group where everyone has the same thoughts, but it brings with it a difficulty to cast on muddled groups with different ideas. And during combat on an individual basis, it has no effect at all…In our battle with you, Touma Kamijou and I were in the way, so the ‘purity’ of the group fell, thus she couldn’t effectively use it against you. It has exceptions—and that’s why I’m here as a bodyguard. “In other words, if you jump in there now, the conditions required for Sheol Fear will be ruined,” Stiyl said, disinterested, putting an abrupt stop to their pointless talk. Ssshhh! A new set of footsteps. They turned their gazes skyward to see dozens of sisters standing on the roofs of each of the two buildings surrounding the courtyard. 3 Inside the darkness-enclosed Church of Matrimony, Agnes stood with her back against a marble pillar. Around ten sisters were waiting nearby as bodyguards, but every time they heard an explosion or a clash, they shivered and looked back and forth busily. Agnes simply stood with her arms folded and eyes resting—you wouldn’t be able to tell who was guarding whom if you saw. “Quit making so much noise already. You all look like idiots. Especially you, Sister Angeline.” “B-but Lady Agnes…” Her clear sarcasm was met by an overreaction by one of the sisters. She looked as though she had seen the messiah as her ship was sinking. She probably wanted to ward off some of her tension by talking to someone. “It’s been more than ten minutes since the battle started. Even if you count Orsola, there’s still such a difference in our numbers! This isn’t normal. S-see?! That explosion—which side did that come from? Maybe they’re on the offensive now…” “…” “W-we should go as well. We could use everyone we can—” “There wouldn’t be a point, so don’t bother,” said Agnes, sounding very bored. “Th-then what should we do? They took Orsola away, so if they run away again—” “They cannot run away,” interrupted Agnes. Then, as if so sure about it that she was too lazy to give an explanation, she said, “There’s no way they can escape. That’s just how this shitty world of ours is made.” The balance crumbled suddenly. Index brought it on. It happened while she was attacking with Sheol Fear, which she’d reassembled to only catch the Roman Orthodox sisters, and wreaking havoc on the Crossist believers’ minds by using the 103,000 grimoires. Suddenly, one of the sisters—if she recalled correctly, she was Sister Lucia, who had attacked Kamijou at the theme park with the wheel—shouted. “Dia priorità di cima ad un attacco! Il nemico di Dio è ucciso comunque” The sisters all stopped abruptly. Their expressions disappeared without a sound. They joined their breathing like a military force giving a salute and took something out of their clothing. In their right and left hands were expensive-looking ballpoint pens. “…?” At that point, Index anticipated some kind of magic attack focus fire on her. But her prediction was completely wrong. The next moment… …the sisters surrounding Index, nearly a hundred strong, smoothly took their ballpoint pens and shoved them through their own eardrums. There was a squelch like of fingers crushing grapes. Crimson-red blood dripped from the holes in their ears. They all tossed aside the two ballpoint pens they’d stabbed their ears with and took up their weapons once again. Their faces were colored with intense pain, and yet their desire to destroy put magnificent smiles on their faces. On the sharp ends of the pens on the ground were stuck white stringlike things soaked in blood. They were human eardrums. Index felt an overwhelming urge to vomit coming from deep within her. “Are they…doing that to avoid Sheol Fear…?” If they couldn’t hear her voice, Sheol Fear wouldn’t work. As Index realized this shocking fact, the sisters surrounding her all came for her at once. “Damn it…?!” Stiyl had been the first to realize it. He moved to go help Index in a hurry, for a moment throwing off the rhythm of his linked combat with Tatemiya that had been going well. He burst one flame sword after another, toppling sisters with their impacts left and right and momentarily blinding them with their light. But reaching Index was as far as he could go—the sisters had gotten used to his series of identical attacks and had even found a counter for them. “Over here” Just then, the double doors of the nearby Church of Final Anointment flew open, and Touma Kamijou shouted from them. A wound-covered Orsola was behind him as well, and she was using a big clock hand wrapped in bandages as a cane. He must have run out of ways to fight on the run with the wounded girl and decided to hide out for a while. Index, Stiyl, and Tatemiya all managed to dive into the church. Kamijou hurried and shut the doors, and not a moment too soon—one after another, blades came piercing through the black oak more than five centimeters thick. They had successfully shut the Roman Orthodox sisters out for the time being. However, who knew how many minutes the doors would last? It was like the three little piggies nestled in their house of straw. Kamijou sank weakly to the cold marble floor. “Looks like everyone’s safe for now…Hey, can you walk, Orsola?” “You are…quite a worrywart. I haven’t sustained…such bad wounds.” Orsola’s hands and feet were entirely covered by her habit, so it was difficult to tell by looking, but she appeared to have taken quite a bit of pain. Nevertheless, she gave a smile, though weak. Kamijou felt a pang in his chest, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. So instead, he tried to force a change in the topic. “…So what do we do now?” No one present answered his question. They’d been keeping up the precarious balance of the battle, but it had come toppling down all at once, and everyone here knew it. The members of Amakusa fighting outside were also barely maintaining equilibrium through individual surprise attacks and great escapes. They had their hands full with their own problems, so it would be hard to ask them for help. With the gashing and thwacking of iron nails being hammered into a tree, holes opened one by one in the church’s door. Index’s face went a little pale. “I-I don’t think my Sheol Fear can, umm, a-affect them with their ears like…th-that at all.” She blanched, remembering the sight of them piercing their eardrums. “And I can only use spell interception against one person at a time. I don’t think I can interrupt hundreds of people casting hundreds of spells all at once!” “?” Index gave an analysis of her own combat potential as though it were the normal thing to do, but Kamijou had no idea what was going on. What had Index done, anyway, and how had it worked? This time, Tatemiya spoke. “My guys’re doin’ their best, but it’s gonna be tough. The scariest thing is when people attack you prepared to die. If that flood of people hits us, it won’t matter how much skill we’ve got, man. It’s like an army of ants devouring a wild beast.” Along with his bitter words came the sounds of blades stabbing and thrusting into the doors. From the other side of the shredded door peeked in many sets of eyes. Kamijou felt his gut freeze over. If that door came down, the armed sisters would flood inside like an avalanche. They only had a few minutes’ reprieve. If they couldn’t find a way out of this, they were dog food—but the more they discussed it, the more it felt like they’d been cornered in a dead-end street. Kamijou felt a panic beginning to burn up in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t do anything about it. “Well, maybe if…Maybe if we had the Book of the Law here, we could use my decoding method and discover a way out…,” said Orsola Aquinas suddenly. Everyone present looked at her. The Book of the Law. The thing everyone had forgotten about—the one grimoire that triggered this whole incident. Said to have been written by Edward Alexander…the world’s strongest sorcerer, Crowley. Thought to be able to freely control angelic techniques. Rumored to declare the end of a Crossist-dominated age upon opening it. The ultimate forbidden tome, sealing away utterly vast knowledge. If the book was really that dangerous, they might be able to use it for negotiations just by declaring they’d undone the seal. “But the book being stolen was just a farce made to trap us, man. I doubt the real thing was even ever brought to Japan in the first place. If they brought in a fake and the original is still in the Vatican Library, that’s it.” That’s it Kamijou and Index spoke at the same time. They had the original copy of the Book of the Law right here. “Even Index couldn’t decipher the book, right? That means she’s gone through it to try and decipher it. So it wouldn’t be strange if you still had the whole book stored in your memories, right?” “Yep. The encoded text has been collecting dust in the corner, though.” This time, Stiyl’s facial expression worsened. “You can’t! If you do that, she’ll record the contents of the Book of the Law. If that happens, far more sorcerers would start going after her!” “? Are you worried about me?” Index, “a complete stranger,” tilted her head in confusion, while Stiyl, “who knew her well once,” reddened as if he’d been caught unawares, then immediately erased it with a click of his tongue. Index thought that sorcerers chasing her was a natural event, and Stiyl was well aware nothing he could say would stop her—as well as the fact that he couldn’t think of anything better. Stiyl made a sour face, then suddenly shouted, “Touma Kamijou” “Wh-what?!” “Grow stronger! If she dies because of what happens here, I will burn your body and soul to a crisp until not even ashes remain” He swore under his breath and turned away. Index was still looking confused, looking like she couldn’t tell why he felt the need to get mad over this. Tatemiya looked at Kamijou and Stiyl in turn with a complicated expression. Kamijou wished he wouldn’t look at him like that. Index, her head still crooked in bafflement, asked, “So what is the decoding method for the Book of the Law like?” “Ah, yes. I’ll give you an explanation now.” At her question, Orsola smoothly and steadfastly began their conversation again. A bead of sweat broke out on Kamijou’s forehead. He had thought it a pipe dream this whole time, but now that it was becoming real right before his eyes, he sensed the risks he hadn’t given much thought to come rushing to mind one after the other. Kamijou alone (ironically enough) truly understood from personal experience how dangerous these angelic techniques, which were no more than rumors and speculations for sorcerers, could really be. The “purge” that one of the archangels, the Power of God, had tried to unleash would have burned half the planet to a crisp with billions of bullets of light. If they could use those here, it would completely change the situation. But… Was it really all right for anyone to possess such immense power? Orsola read Kamijou’s expression. “We are not saying we will use the Book of the Law’s power. We simply need to display our intent and ability to decipher and use it. I would much rather not use such a power,” she explained seriously. That’s right—her reason for originally studying the book was about the seal on the knowledge within. Orsola wouldn’t have wanted things to turn out this way, and even if they broke out of here for the moment, sorcerers around the world who desired the book’s knowledge might begin going after her. She had made this decision having considered all that. She would take action she didn’t wish to take. She had considered the dangers therein and yet still she said she would lend her power to Kamijou and the others. The method to decipher the Book of the Law, a method no one in history had ever broken. The very moment they unlocked the forbidden tome that not even Index, who contained 103,000 of them, could read… “It’s based on Temurah—in other words, a character replacement method. However, the rules are abnormal in that they are strongly related to the line number. First, you arrange the twenty-two characters used in Hebrew into two lines, then note the line number above each—” Kamijou had absolutely no clue what she was talking about, but it all probably meant a lot to Index. Her face was more serious than he’d ever seen it. Right now, the knots in the grimoire nobody could read were coming undone in Index’s head one by one, being rebuilt as the blueprints for an ultimate weapon. As he thought about how mysterious it was, he got a chill—had they done something they would never be able to take back? “—in other words, the character conversion pattern changes based on which line number of the character’s page it’s written on, so while it may look quite intricate, you understand the rules for sentences on the same line number don’t change even depending on the page number, right? In addition—” “You would take the phrases,” interrupted Index suddenly, “converted by using the line number character conversion pattern, then match it up with the page number and change their orders. Then, finally, you’d come out with a single sentence. The title would be The End of Two Ages, and its contents outline physical angelic techniques in Enochian.” It was as though Index had anticipated what she knew, and Orsola blinked her eyes in surprise. “That’s enough, I understand it now.” Orsola, whose explanation was cut off in the middle—she should have been the only one who knew of this—paused in puzzlement. “Excuse me, but what is it that you understand?” “Right,” grunted Index. “This isn’t the correct method. It’s a dummy answer set up to trap people.” “Wha…,” started Orsola, her entire body freezing for a moment. Index, though, looked her in the face with a truly pained expression. “I’m sorry. I got this far, too. Actually, there are tons of other dummies, too. That’s what’s scary about the Book of the Law.” She exhaled. “There are more than a hundred ways to decode it. And each of them gives you different sentences. They’re all dummies. It isn’t that nobody can read this grimoire—it’s that everyone can actually read it, but everyone gets lured in to a false decoding method.” “B…” But…, she squeaked. “It’s set up so that even incorrect decoding methods give you readable sentences. So even if you come up with an incorrect one, you’ll think that it’s the right one. It stinks, but maybe there was no way you could have realized it. There is a sentence in English written on the front cover of the book—do you remember it?” Index’s face looked like she was struggling to convey the harsh truth. “There is no law beyond Do what thou wilt. In other words, the decoding ‘laws’ one thinks are correct will lead to an infinite number of mistaken correct answers. It’s a terrifying grimoire.” All hope vanished from Orsola Aquinas’s face. It was only natural. She had risked her life to take on this challenge, believing that the knowledge she acquired would make everyone happy, and vowing that they would one day be able to destroy the original copies of grimoires—the root of all evil. The decoding method, her greatest treasure, dear to her heart, could do nothing. Not destroy the original grimoire and not rescue her allies from this terrible situation—nothing. “Depending on how ya look at it, this may have saved us. Hey, think if we tell ’em we don’t know how to decode the thing after all, they’d let us off the hook?” As Tatemiya finished his question, there was a boom and the church doors shook. “I…don’t think so. They can’t retreat now that we’ve seen so much of what’s happening behind the scenes,” answered Stiyl, giving a thin smile to the hopeless situation. There was no longer anything to be done. Their hope was lost to eternity, having never gotten it in the first place. We need to run away, thought Kamijou, feeling an intense panic. He went to guide Index and Orsola to the back door, but then he ran into Stiyl, his flame sword at the ready. His “certain kill” rune cards scattered helplessly all over the floor. Ba-bam With a much louder impact, the doors of the Church of Final Anointment were destroyed and slammed down into the floor. As Kamijou and the others exchanged two or three words, into the church that carried out the ceremonies concerning funerals came hundreds of sisters all in jet-black, hoisting their religious weapons, flooding in like an avalanche. 4 Ten more minutes had passed. Only their leader, Agnes Sanctis, stood in the darkness-enclosed Church of Matrimony. The ten sisters assigned to her guard had looked about to be crushed by the tension, so she had relieved them of their duty and ordered them to join the fray. It would have been more dangerous to head out directly to the battle, but the girls all went to the battlefield with bright expressions. They would still have been bound by a considerable, unseen fear. There’s no need for them to be in a hurry. Why are they so tense? Remembering the faces of her cowardly subordinates made her sigh. She could still hear explosions and clashing from outside the building, but her face harbored no unease. With experience, one could understand the situation by sound alone: the fact that unlike earlier, the enemy’s unity was now in shambles and they were completely on the defensive. What’s this? Suddenly, her ears caught an odd noise that didn’t fit into the rhythm of the battle. It was one set of footsteps, and their owner threw open the double doors of the church. Bang came the loud sound. There stood Touma Kamijou, but Agnes Sanctis’s face didn’t show a hint of change. In fact, she almost seemed to be smiling. Unlike how he’d done the same thing before, his face was plastered with exhaustion and his body covered with wounds. “No matter how I think about it, though, with that many people against you, you shouldn’t have been able to move freely around here,” remarked Agnes, resting her back casually against a marble pillar. Kamijou smiled, his breath ragged. “Well…we made a little plan.” “A plan? Oh.” She closed one eye. “I get it, I see! Is that so? After all that acting cool when you came in here last time, you ended up using your allies as decoys, didn’t you? It’s true—our forces are spread evenly to attack all of you, so nobody should have been able to get here, hmm?” “…” He remained silent at the meaningful end to her sentence. Agnes smiled gleefully—she had hit the bull’s-eye. “Ku-ku. Orsola Aquinas said something. That you act on faith rather than deceit, or something like that. A-ha-ha! What a laugh. In the end, you’re only alive because you deceived your own allies and used them as decoys!” “No.” He answered her scornful voice with the direct opposite—a friendly smile. “I have faith in them—unlike you. There are things only they can do. I can’t do them, so I got them to give me something else to do. That’s all.” He tightened his right fist. “Though I wish they could have a little more faith in me. I told them they didn’t need to worry, and I could handle my own problems by myself.” “…So you told them you could stop the whole attack if you defeated me, their commander? Wow, I’m surprised you can still manage to remain so optimistic. Even though everyone thinks a flock of sheep without a shepherd will go batshit insane.” She lifted her back from the cold marble pillar. She kicked her toes against her silver staff lying on the floor, then caught the flying weapon with one hand. “Well, that’s fine. I was just thinking I had some time to kill. Sloth is a sin, after all. I will destroy one of your illusions, one of your hopes—it will make a great diversion!” Touma Kamijou checked around him. There were about fifteen meters between him and Agnes. The building was under construction and thus empty, so there were no obstacles in the way. Despite all those people warring outside, only Kamijou and the girl were in this closed-off space. She held a silver staff in her hand. The angel at the narrow staff’s tip was designed like an angel curled up like Rodin’s The Thinker, its six wings enclosing it like a cage. Clack, clack, came the hard sounds. Agnes Sanctis took off the thick soles on both her shoes and jumped backward. “Tutto il paragone. Il quinto dei cinque elementi, ordina la canna che mostra pace ed ordine!” She held the staff with both hands, and after intoning words of prayer, the angel on the end of the staff spread its wings, opening up like a flower. The six wings stopped at equal points of a circle, like a clock face. “Prima. Segua la legge di Dio ed una croce. Due cose diverse sono connesse!” She lightly swung her staff as she spoke. Clack came the sound of its tip tapping against the marble pillar beside her. …? Kamijou frowned to himself at the strike that had been made outside her range, when— Whack A moment later, Kamijou’s vision had toppled ninety degrees to the side. “Gah…! Agh?!” By the time he’d realized something heavy and metal had hit him in the side of the head, he was already crumpled on the floor. He desperately shook his unsteady head and made sure he had a clear view; then Agnes, with the bottom of her twirling staff, hit the marble floor with a takk. Right as Kamijou, shuddering with fear, rolled along the floor, an impact struck it where his head had just been a moment ago. The dull wham created depressions and fissures in the floor like a hammer had slammed into it. A…coordinate attack? A skill that uses teleportation? He didn’t understand, but he figured he shouldn’t be standing around. Meanwhile, Agnes removed a knife from her clothing. Then, as though plucking a guitar string, she began to hack away at her staff. Grrk zzhh grrkk greee came the odd noises as Kamijou fled, something invisible slicing through the air behind him. “That staff…?!” “Ha-ha! I guess it is pretty obvious. It’s a little too similar for my liking to the map magic Amakusa was gonna use. When I harm this, it harms something else in turn. And if I use it like this…!” She pretended to draw the knife along it again, then flipped around the staff and struck the floor. A sudden impact came rushing at Kamijou from above, and with no way to fend it off, it landed unnaturally onto his left shoulder. Bam! came the heavy blow, echoing through the building. “…?!” He could probably nullify her attacks if he used the Imagine Breaker, but since he didn’t know where these attacks were even coming from, he couldn’t bring his right hand in line with them. When he stopped, Agnes twirled the angel staff again and slammed it hard into the nearby marble pillar. Oh…shit…! He hastily jumped to the side. The only good thing about this was that her attacks lagged behind her command—albeit for less than a second—giving him some leeway. So he should have just needed to keep moving to dodge the attacks, but… Ker-slam The attack shouldn’t have hit—but it sank into Kamijou’s left arm and side all at once. “Guh…” The sideways blow sent Kamijou sliding down across the floor. In his sides, right from the core of his body, burst forth a stinging pain. His left arm had been between the point of impact and his sides, and yet the strike had slammed into both. Caught in the middle, a joint in his left arm might have been dislocated, since he couldn’t seem to move it, and the sense of pain in it disappeared. It just felt a little sweaty and hot all over. Agnes struck the tip of the staff against the floor. Kamijou immediately rolled to the side, but the impact hit him straight in the chest anyway. He lurched, the oxygen in his lungs being forced out, and yet he still tried to scramble backward. Agnes took the chance to promptly slit her staff with the knife and deliver a diagonal cut to his back. Rrrrrip came the sensation of strands of muscle being severed. For some reason, there was a second before he felt the pain explode, like thunder after a lightning strike. “Gah, bah…aahh?!” He writhed against the searing pain in his back—and Agnes swung her staff across. As it collided with the marble pillar, it sent his body flying across the floor like a rock skipping across the surface of water. “You’re not gonna be able to keep making those dull dodges, you know.” Agnes twirled her staff, disappointed. “Maybe there’s a little gap between my command and its activation, but I just have to work that into where I attack to eliminate the possibility of error. If I consider how you’ll dodge and set up my mine attacks in the air where you’ll dodge, you’ll run straight into them! It’s no secret. Didn’t you realize my misses earlier were just my feeling you out?” Kamijou moved his head, burning with pain, and managed to listen to what she said. He wobbled to his feet, paying attention to his stinging back. Agnes already seemed sure she’d win. She rested her cheek on the staff she was so proud of. “Modern western magic uses weapons symbolizing the five elements: fire, wind, water, earth, and aether. Did you know that? Fire is symbolized by the staff, wind by the short sword, water by the goblet, and earth by the discus. They’re called aspected weapons.” She gave a smirk. “This Lotus Wand I’m holding is the symbolic weapon for aether. It has some interesting traits. It’s special because while it can manipulate aether, it can also be used as a weapon for any of the other four elements.” Swish! She swung the staff diagonally down. The moment it collided with the floor, Kamijou felt a chill and jumped directly backward. But even that had factored into her plans, as a strike from right over him impacted him in the head. His knees gave way under him. He had been shaken to his very core. He could blindly swing his right hand around all he wanted—but every time, as if laughing at him, a hit would get him in the gut from a different direction. His vision slowly blinked on and off. His legs had already started to give way. Gh…gah…Damn it, I could erase it if I touched it. If I could only touch it. What do I do? How do I see where Agnes’s attacks are coming from? How they’re angled? I can get the timing at least, but… Kamijou’s face becoming one of desperation, Agnes curled up her lips in enjoyment. “The five elements grant everything in creation its form. What do you think happens when you apply this concept to Idol Theory? That grimoire library said so before, didn’t she? Tadataka Inou’s map is the same. Though all that had was a connection between the map and the terrain. The Lotus Wand applies to everything. I can apply those laws to anything. I can use the space itself, for example!” Agnes smacked the pillar with her staff like a stake. Kamijou was slow to react, and a dull impact got him in the gut, sending him rolling backward. He tried to sit back up and finally realized that blood was dripping from his mouth. He spat it out. “Urgh…gahDamn. For someone who hates…the Book of the Law and all this magic stuff…you sure do use it plenty…” Despite the fact that if she kept prattling on, he could recover his stamina, she didn’t seem to particularly mind. “Ah-ha-ha. Angry ’cause you got beaten? The crosier used by high-ranking clergy was developed from the mace, a weapon used to bash enemies’ armor in. What’s wrong with using a tool for its original purpose? Ha-ha. Still, a steel cudgel being the symbol of peace and order? Makes me laugh.” Agnes stuck out her tongue, her expression enraptured, and licked the side of the staff. The odd sensation spreading through his body made him hastily leap back. She giggled at his reaction. “Besides,” she continued casually, “modern western sorcery, whose fundamentals were developed in the twentieth century, has all sorts of underhanded Crossist tricks built in, remember? As an alchemist might put it, I’m only using the unspoken depths of Crossism is all!” She brought the staff down. Kamijou immediately tried to dodge it, but his feet were lagging behind his conscious thought. There was a thud as the heavy impact knocked him in the back of the head. “Agh…! I don’t really…care what you say…I’m not a sorcerer.” “It’s the same thing! You don’t pray to God yet still receive His blessing. Such a thing mustn’t be allowed. Of course not! We act for our own benefit. Why should our taxes get spent on people like you who never work? England and Amakusa are equally heretic scum. Any teachings other than those of the Roman Orthodox Church are no teachings at all! Those things don’t even count as work. Anyway, you’re a huge pain. Now stop complaining and accept a death on the assembly line!” Here it comes…Kamijou gritted his teeth. Agnes’s attacks weren’t as flashy as Stiyl’s flame swords or Tatemiya’s slashes, but nonetheless, he couldn’t keep getting hit by them over and over again. His feet were shaking, letting him know that his limit was near. He knew the attacks’ timing. If Agnes’s attacks were magical, then he could erase them with the touch of his right hand. So now. If he could just figure out the angle and direction they would come from. If he could accurately align his right hand with her attacks. Here it comes Agnes’s face cleared and she swung the angel staff around like a conductor. Once again, his feet couldn’t avoid the attack she’d placed in anticipation, one step ahead. He was blown back without any time to bring his right hand up, and he rolled onto the floor but used the momentum to spring back to his feet. Bam! He channeled strength into his feet and dashed forward with all his might so that he could gain even one step. There were about seven meters between them. Kamijou’s feet could carry him within range in two or three steps, but there was no panic on Agnes’s face. She must have judged that if he were coming straight at her, he would be easy to anticipate. She gripped her angelic staff tightly with both hands and slammed it into the floor as though she were splitting a watermelon. There was the heavy wham of a collision. If the impact came straight down, it would crack his skull to pieces without a doubt. However. That attack… Kamijou skidded to a halt. She had anticipated his movement, one step ahead of him—so if he didn’t take another step forward, it wouldn’t hit him. …It’s the one I’ve been waiting for Then, he took his clenched right fist and thrust it straight into the space one step ahead of him. Pop There was a roar, like a balloon popping. There was a sensation, like an invisible, giant soap bubble breaking, and the attack that would have hit him was instead blown away without a trace. “Huh?!” Agnes, a professional, would have understood the strange thing that just happened better than Kamijou, an amateur. He ran straight through the now-empty space like a bullet. She hurried to swing her angel staff around. But she couldn’t get as much power as she wanted due to the unforeseen situation… …Kamijou dove into range… …Agnes’s staff finally hit the marble pillar… …Kamijou’s head bounced to the side with a high-pitched noise… …but still… …but still, he never once opened that fist of his. Crash went a sharp impact. Agnes Sanctis’s back slammed into the marble pillar behind her. Her consciousness wavered. Her mind was blanking out, slowly calling forth pieces of memories that she thought she’d sealed away. Gh…ah…Am…Am I…? Agnes desperately tried to hold them back, but the urge to vomit billowed up from her stomach like magma gushing forth, preventing her from doing so. …going…back? She remembered a back alley in Milan. All of the sun’s light was stolen by the outward tourist city, and on the brick ground crawled people, mice, flies, and slugs, all together. A little gathering of the hopeless. Back…there again? Her memories burst. Their fragments tore at her heart. Behind a restaurant. Inside a garbage can. Wiping off the slugs crawling on the discarded meat. Brushing off the hairs of mouse corpses. Pulling off the detached wings of cockroaches. Squish, squish. Squish, squish. She chewed. She chewed. She chewed for all her days. No…no… Her whitening vision was recovered by her own words. The weapon she’d been holding began to fall away from her exhausted, powerless fingertips. It was the knife she’d used to damage the angel staff. The symbol of her battle, the weapon to defeat enemies, fell from her hands and clattered to the floor. However. However, even without the knife, she would never, ever let go of this staff. No, no! Like hell…I’ll never…go back… Gkk. She filled her hands with power, squeezing the silver staff as if to break it. Her consciousness returned. She regained her will to fight. Touma Kamijou and Agnes Sanctis glared at each other. There were about five meters between them. The distance could be spanned in the blink of an eye with either a close-range fist or a long-range staff. Their stare down was reminiscent of a sword showdown in a period film or a quick-draw contest in a western. Sweat slowly dripped down both their cheeks… Both their nerves and minds were stinging with heat… Both their breathing had suddenly stopped… “Hmph.” Then, Agnes gave a dissatisfied snort and suddenly broke her fighting stance with her staff. Moreover, she looked away from Kamijou and around at their surroundings. It was an opportunity, but Kamijou wouldn’t move so easily. He was searching for the danger that could be hidden within that opportunity. Agnes rolled her eyes back to him without moving her neck. “I’m terribly sorry—you seem to be trying your hardest and all—but it looks like things are already over.” For a moment, he didn’t understand what she said. A few seconds later, he did. There was no sound. The Church of Matrimony was now silent. Every single noise had stopped in its entirety. It was like he was standing alone in the middle of a closed movie theater by himself—the silence was deafening, piercing into his chest. And it wasn’t only because he and Agnes had stopped moving. Outside… The Roman Orthodox sisters, a whopping two hundred and fifty women strong—and the mixed force of English Puritans and Amakusa, barely numbering more than fifty. There were supposed to be more than three hundred combined outside this Church of Matrimony, and yet the sounds and echoes surrounding them had altogether disappeared. That fact meant that… It meant… “” Stinging pains burst forth over Kamijou’s entire body. As though to put an eternal end to that pain, Agnes Sanctis made another declaration. “It would seem that you all decided that they would hold out as decoys while you defeated me, the leader…,” she said—ridiculing him, berating him, and in the end a little sympathetic—“…but it looks like things have ended far more plainly than the illusion you were chasing after.” Kamijou heard those words. He listened to them, forgetting even to breathe. The energy left his tightened fist. His reason for fighting vanished. He stood there dazed, as though wanting to say he no longer even had a reason to be standing here. People’s faces edged their way across the back of his mind. Then, as though crushing them with his teeth, he declared, “Yeah…” Then, at the end, with absolute conviction, he declared, “You’re right. Your illusion is over now, Agnes Sanctis.” Her face creased into a confused frown. Bang Behind Kamijou, the double doors to the Church of Matrimony flew wide open. Agnes Sanctis, looking directly at him, saw it from over his shoulder. Timidly, fearfully, she saw what was there. The silhouettes entering through the Church of Matrimony’s entrance—they were not the subordinates familiar to her but the Index of Prohibited Books and Stiyl Magnus from English Puritanism, along with Saiji Tatemiya from Amakusa-Style Crossism cradling Orsola Aquinas in his arms, and behind him his colleagues. And there was one more. Standing beside Stiyl, a humanoid monster cloaked in orange flame. Agnes did not know the identity of the monster. If one who did saw it, they would have called it by this name: The Witch-Hunter King, Innocentius. A behemoth of fires blazing more than three thousand degrees Celsius. It was the last thing one would ever see, housed in a cycle of explosion and rebirth. It melted and reduced to ash all attacks and obstacles to destroy its enemy. It was an attack spell of a battle-lover who held true to his belief that the best defense was a good offense. However, even if one who knew of the technique had seen it, they still would have doubted their eyes. It was no longer the ordinary Innocentius. Its flames were denser and its presence more intimidating. The waves of heat flooding from its body warped the air surrounding it, giving an illusion of countless transparent wings growing from the giant’s back. “Cards used—four thousand three hundred,” said the red-haired priest lightly, as though singing. “Not so many, in terms of numbers…but still, Amakusa isn’t anything to shake a stick at. They made an even larger diagram using the rune cards’ positions, used the diagram to transform the magical meaning of the entire area, then converted the whole Church of Orsola into one enormous magic circle. Though we did exclude this building from its effective scope so his right hand wouldn’t interfere…A magic circle constructed with multiple layers, using every object here—I doubt I could learn such cheap tricks.” Stiyl gazed in satisfaction at the flames roaring mightily upward. “I had everyone help me place the cards. Well, it was already nearly completed—just needed them to fit the last pieces into the jigsaw puzzle, as it were. Oh, come to think of it, I haven’t introduced myself yet, have I? I’m not as good at making assaults on one place after another—I’m much better at creating a single point of control and defending it. Certain circumstances led me to desiring such sorcery.” She could see outside through the wide-open doors. Magical flames littered the flat, flora-less, stone courtyard, and sisters in black habits were lying there as if to cover it up. Their bodies didn’t appear to have been carbonized or badly burned. The explosions they’d heard probably came from the flame monster. It had unleashed shock waves at the sisters and mowed them down dozens at a time. Everyone who had fallen seemed only to be passed out. There would have been barely one-fifth of all of the sisters who had been beaten into incapacitation. But perhaps that evidenced the destructive power of Innocentius—the sisters still holding their weapons had distanced themselves and were grinding their teeth. They must have seen that if they drew near without due caution, the explosive winds and flames would eat them alive. “What did I tell you? We had a plan.” Kamijou smiled savagely. “They weren’t running all over the place to be decoys. They just needed to set up Stiyl’s secret weapon and put cards all over the church, that’s all…I don’t know how any of it works, though, since I’m no sorcerer myself.” With the Imagine Breaker in Kamijou’s right hand, he couldn’t help with the work of spreading the runic cards. That’s why he shouldered the responsibility of going after Agnes alone. So that he wouldn’t destroy the runes—their true goal—he made Agnes misunderstand that he had gone for her, prepared to die, and having used everyone as decoys. Even without the detailed explanation, Agnes seemed to have guessed the particulars. As well as what she needed to do now. Without falter, still hoisting her staff, she shouted to the sisters outside. “What are you all doing?! We still have a decisive numbers advantage! These pests are insignificant before a combined attack” She was right. No matter how they looked at it, the numbers difference between the Roman Orthodox and Kamijou’s group was absolute. The only reason they were still alive was their scrambling to use all sorts of clever schemes. If they created an encirclement so they couldn’t escape then attacked all at once, they would easily win. However many dozens of sisters were slain in the process, more than a hundred more would march over their corpses and crush Kamijou and the others. Stiyl, a professional sorcerer, was not engaging in killing—but that, too, was only because if he was slaughtering them, it would cause the sisters to panic, thus creating the danger of all of them attacking, prepared for their own destruction…or that should have been why, anyway. Because with that kind of spell, it was more difficult not to kill the enemy. And yet… Despite the sisters having an overwhelming numerical advantage, they did not move. “What are you…?!” Agnes thought about yelling angrily at her subordinates for not understanding basic logic, but somewhere inside, she had realized it, too. A doubt. Though the sisters understood the logical thing to do, somewhere in their minds they couldn’t have faith in it. Should they fight or should they flee—their minds looked fixedly at the swaying scales before them. If even one of them moved, their group psychology would cause an immediate change in the flow. Agnes Sanctis recalled the words of Orsola. —Those people…they act on faith. —How ugly the Roman Orthodox Church is compared to them. “…That’s…pretty funny.” She looked down, tightening her jaw so firmly her molars might break. If the scales were settled in a precarious equilibrium, then she just needed to force them to tip. She would only crush the one before her, Kamijou, and show her superiority to them. Even if she used the sisters to defeat Kamijou, it would not display an overwhelming dominance. But this was the same for Kamijou as well. If he clung to his friends to take down Agnes, he would be displaying his panic, his tension, his fear—and his inferiority. If he did that, the sisters’ minds would be freed from restraint and they would be upon them like an avalanche. In other words, it was one on one. Touma Kamijou in one corner, and Agnes Sanctis in the other. More than three hundred people in all surrounded them, but they were exceedingly alone. Five meters were between them. He was, of course, within the angelic staff’s range. But it would easily be within his fist’s territory with a tiny bit of effort. It was fifty-fifty—in other words, the one whose attack reached first would gain the honor of delivering the final blow. What…do I do…? She edged back and forth, gauging the distance, but on her brow was a bead of sweat. Would her attack hit first? Don’t panic, she told herself, swallowing those words down. A simple clenched fist was no match for the convenience of her Lotus Wand. If she read his next attack and made one full swing, she’d demolish this civilian in one fell swoop. What do I do…What should…What…? But was it all right for her to leave everything up to the safe way—the full swing? What if he dodged it? And worst of all, what if she misread him and put it in the wrong place? No, she should use many smaller, faster attacks as insurance, then make her swing once he had stopped. But what if those smaller attacks were insufficient to stop him—what if he just dove straight in anyway? But, well, no—however, still…But nonetheless, that notwithstanding… The negative sentences continued to pile up. In the end, she couldn’t decide on how best to play her many trump cards. The method…the timing, the weapon…the steps…what the hell do I choose?! And in contrast… In contrast, Touma Kamijou would not falter in using his own trump card. He already had all his force in the fist at his right, entrusting to it his entire life and not an iota less. He had faith. Faith that however much he was hurt, however close to death he tread… Faith in the weapon he had, faith that the way he used his weapon was correct, faith that he would doubtlessly see his weapon defeat the enemy, faith in that outlook, waiting for the beautiful, victorious future ahead. Touma Kamijou had faith—and that’s why he could act. “It’s over, Agnes,” he said without falter. “You’ve figured it out yourself, haven’t you? Your illusion of confidence—it was destroyed a long time ago.” Stiyl plucked the cigarette out of his mouth and flung it carelessly to the side. The orange light arced through the air out of the corner of their eyes, and the moment it hit the ground, it marked the start of the battle. Bam Fierce footsteps. Touma Kamijou tightened his fist like a wrecking ball and launched toward Agnes without waver. What…What should I…Ah, ahh?! Something in Agnes Sanctis’s mind burst open then. The moment of their clash was nigh before her eyes now, and yet the swaying scales never, ever, ever, ever delivered a conclusion. Agnes, pressed to make a choice but without having a satisfying answer, swung her staff with all her might, her face almost looking like she was about to cry. One who bet everything on one last attack—and one who hesitated at that moment about what to bet. The superior of the two did not need to be said. Ger-slam A fierce impact. Agnes’s body flew into the air, grazed the marble pillar behind her, and plunged to the floor. The heavy impact tore the angelic staff from her hands. As her body bounced many meters away across the floor, the wind all came out of her and she finally stopped moving. Then she lost consciousness. With that, the balance between Index, Stiyl, and the others and the Roman Orthodox sisters surrounding them had tipped all the way to one side. One of the sisters, convinced they couldn’t win, dropped her weapon to her feet—and then the sound of another, and yet another came, until finally it was like a torrent of noise. The battle was over. The fist of a single boy had laid low an enemy numbering more than two hundred. Word Count: (11939)