5_Chapter 4_ The Sevens of Murder

CHAPTER 4 The Sevens of MurderDeadly_Sins. 1 In this space, lifeless but certainly vast, stood two people. “…” Kamijou didn’t spare a glance at Himegami, breathing shallowly at his feet. He couldn’t spare it. He didn’t have that kind of time. She had risked death and used everything she had to try and stop someone. If he cared about her for even a second, there was a man in front of him he had to stop as soon as he could. Ten meters strong separated them. Against a man who could distort the world to his bidding with a single word, it was a hopeless distance. “…” He stepped forward despite that. He didn’t have to stop. He didn’t need to turn back. He wasn’t fighting because he just happened to get involved, he set foot onto the battlefield with his own two feet. “…” Therefore, without a word, without a signal… The esper and the alchemist quickly began their battle, each to defeat the other. “Sh!” Kamijou exhaled slightly and tried to burst into a sprint toward Aureolus. Aureolus did nothing about it. All he did was take a single acupuncture needle out of his clothes pocket and insert it into his neck. There were ten meters between them. If he put his back into it, he could close that in four strides— “Suffocate.” But after Kamijou took the first step, he suddenly lost all momentum. Grrrk. It felt like a steel cable wrapped around his neck, and he flinched and bent over at the pain. He grabbed his neck with his own right hand like a person suffering from imbibed poison might. The memories lost to Aureolus had been revived like that, and Himegami, ordered to die, avoided death like this. However, his breathing didn’t return to normal. He wasn’t able to take a breath; it was like instant glue had hardened in the back of his throat. Calm down…Calm down! As Kamijou gasped for breath, he dislodged the fingers of his right hand from his throat. What was it he said? Bind my neck with a rope?…No. It was more vague, more simple. He was just saying my breath should stop and I should die, wasn’t he?! So he took his fingers from his throat and forced them all the way into his mouth. Like someone trying to throw up something they just ate. His fingertip touched the back of his throat; as the urge to vomit jolted through him, he heard the crash of glass breaking, and his breath returned. This all happened in a mere five seconds. But Aureolus, who could use one word as a weapon, still had time to play around in those five seconds. Disinterestedly, Aureolus threw away the slender, hairlike needle he had stuck into his neck and announced: “Electrocute him.” An instant later, Kamijou found himself surrounded by pale blue electric lights from all directions. Before the muscles on his spine could freeze in terror, the vortex of sparks burned through the air and scrambled toward him. …?! He immediately thrust out his right hand, though it wasn’t a calculated move. However, like a lightning rod, the electricity gathered only to his outstretched fingers. The sparks that touched his hand recoiled back like a snake at deadly poison, but they began to quietly disappear. I can erase them… Kamijou’s heartbeat, though, quickened from excitement more than nervousness. In contrast, the alchemist narrowed his eyes slightly. He took another hairlike needle and jabbed it into the back of his neck. “Strangle him. In addition, crush him to death.” Dozens of ropes flew at him from the floor, creating waves in it like the ocean surface. At the same moment they wrapped themselves firmly around Kamijou’s neck, an abandoned car fell from the ceiling, also creating waves. I can erase them…! But with a simple swing of his right hand, the ropes ripped apart like strips of wet paper, and the lump of steel descending on him crumbled like a sugar cube and disappeared into the void. Aureolus threw the needle aside as if a poisonous bug had crawled up his neck. I can erase them. I can do this. I can avoid his attacks. If he gives orders with a word, that also means he can only throw one attack at me at a time. If I keep a cool head and deal with them, he’s nothing to be afraid of! Though Aureolus’s means of attack involved giving commands using words, it also meant that Kamijou could predict the attacks as he heard those words. It was the same concept as taking cards quickly in karuta. If he said, “electrocute him,” he could guess just from the four letters elec what kind of attack was coming. It only gave him a split second. However, having a second to spare during fistfights didn’t happen in the first place. In boxing, punches can fly at you every 0.3 seconds. Though the force of each and every one of Aureolus’s blows was tremendous, the speed of his attacks wasn’t much different from human fists. Understanding it would let him extinguish his fear of the unknown. The gist was that this was the same as punching it out with delinquents pulling out-of-place knives on him, despite it being a children’s tussle. Aureolus scowled a bit, possibly having caught on to the composure in Kamijou’s expression. “I see. The true explanation—your right hand must erase all, including my Ars Magna.” Kamijou had a slight doubt at the alchemist, whose own composure didn’t crumble. “Then it means this. Is it impossible to erase an attack that cannot be touched by your right hand?” This time, he thought Aureolus’s words would freeze him alive. “A gun in my hand. Load out: magic bullets. Usage: firing. Quantity: One is more than enough.” The alchemist gleefully stuck a thin needle into the back of his neck. He lightly threw his hand to the side, and instantly, it was gripping a sword. At a glance, it looked like a rapier, fit to be held by princes in children’s books, but it wasn’t. It was a disguised gun—there was a flintlock, like the kind pirates would have used a long time ago, buried in the sword’s guard. Something is coming! Kamijou’s body automatically overflowed with tension… “Begin firing at a speed exceeding that of human kinetic vision.” Aureolus’s rapier flashed up, slicing the air in front of him—as soon as Kamijou saw it happen, the sound of gunpowder exploding resounded through the room. A moment later, something lightly scraped his cheek, and then a magic bullet shining with pale white light collided with the wall, scattering a roar of sparks. “…!” It was simple. He pulled the trigger built into the sword. That was it. But Kamijou couldn’t be expected to intercept a magic bullet sailing at his eyes. He froze, his right hand still in place. It was simple. He pulled the trigger prepared in the sword. That was all. However, expecting the kind of ability that could intercept a magic bullet soaring at a person’s eyes was harsh. Kamijou froze, his right hand still in place. It made him tense up more compared to some supernatural ability or sorcery, because he could easily imagine the destructive force of a lead bullet. This wasn’t anywhere near the same speed as the Limen Magna the body double used. It wasn’t a question of sorcery or esper powers; these magic bullets were impossible for a human to avoid or defend against. They spelled certain death. Aureolus, looking satisfied, tossed aside the needle stuck in his neck. “Mass-produce previous action. Prepare rapid firing via ten disguised guns.” As soon as the words left his lips, a total of ten sword guns appeared in Aureolus’s hands, five each, spread out like steel fans. If I get shot by one of those, I’m done for. It was definite that Touma Kamijou couldn’t dodge or block them. Run…! Therefore, Kamijou would try to evade before they were fired. He was about to attempt a roll to the side… …but he suddenly thought of something. Behind him were Himegami, right at his feet and barely able to breathe, and Stiyl, collapsed by the wall and unable to move. “Idiot! What are you stop—!” Stiyl’s stunned shout, and… “Preparations complete. All ten disguised guns begin firing simultaneously.” …Aureolus’s voice and ten blue-shining magic bullets making direct hits on Kamijou’s entire body all happened at the same time. The ten impacts hit everywhere on Kamijou like iron fists. To say that they “flew at him” wouldn’t do them justice. He couldn’t feel this crazy, invisible, high-speed assault any more than he could a video that dropped a frame. “Gh…gah…?!” His only saving grace was that the magic bullets didn’t have enough power to kill him. He was blown backward being pummeled with slow, old-fashioned shells, and he left a trail of blood in his wake. Like a bouncing gumball, he tumbled onto the floor, and then slam! He hit something and stopped. When he looked, he saw it was Stiyl’s body. It seemed he’d been sent almost seven meters back. He thought his flesh had torn and his bones had broken, but it was only intense pain. It seemed like he could still move everything fine. He didn’t think he was lucky. The alchemist had said, “I shall not kill you so easily.” Aureolus appeared gratified by this result and pointed the palm of his hand toward Kamijou again. “…Tsk. What is that? As far as I can tell from the earlier memory manipulation and this sequence of attacks, it certainly looks just like you’re altering reality to your whims with a few words.” But Stiyl spoke first, as if to block Aureolus from doing so. The alchemist diverted his attention to Stiyl, lying prone on the floor. “Hah. Ars Magna is nothing more than the pinnacle of alchemy. It seems to me that it is only sensible that though attaining it is unimaginably difficult, it is the end goal, so one will naturally arrive there if one continues to walk down the path.” “That’s absurd. Even if the Ars Magna is theoretically complete, the incantation is too long—one or two hundred years wouldn’t be enough to finish it. You can’t shorten the spell any more, either, and even if you split the work up by passing it down from parent to child to grandchild, the ceremony would be distorted like a game of telephone…!” Stiyl shot a brief glance toward Kamijou as he said this. Kamijou nodded. He understood. If Aureolus was performing these attacks with a few of his words, then it would be safe if he diverted his attention and made him think less about attacking them. While Stiyl drew Aureolus’s attention, he was implicitly saying: Find a way to beat him somehow with what little time I’m buying. “It seems like it’s something difficult to realize.” Aureolus didn’t realize it. “Hah. One cannot complete the ceremony in the span of one hundred or two hundred years—yes, if one should do so alone. Dividing the work by passing it down through the generations will warp the ceremony like a game of telephone—this is correct, but it is not necessary to pass it down to one child.” “…What?” Stiyl furrowed his brow, and Index talked in a scornful voice. “It’s the Gregorian Choir. If you directly control two thousand people and have them chant the spell, the pace of the work is multiplied by two thousand.…Even if it was a ceremony that took four hundred years, you could get it done in just seventy days!” An operation done not in series, but in parallel. Kamijou looked at Index. He thought that what she was saying was knowledge from the 103,000 grimoires in her head…but that wasn’t it. No one had ever completed Ars Magna in the first place, so there wouldn’t be a book in which his solution would be written. She put it all together in her head by combining the knowledge she already had. “In reality, I was intending to multiply the effect by clashing spell with spell. I accelerated it by only an additional one hundred and twenty times; this cannot be called a success.” Kamijou scraped together the tattered pieces of his awareness and looked around. His body moved. The distance to Aureolus was only seventeen meters—not all that far. If he could somehow dodge the alchemist’s onslaught, he should be able to aggress on him immediately. “One hundred and twenty times…You did it in just half a day?!” He got the feeling that the act had been wiped out of Stiyl’s words. “But this is a gathering of espers. If you use something like the Gregorian Choir, their bodies would be destroyed, because of their different brain circuits!” Kamijou looked around once again. There was nothing that looked suitable for a weapon. He groped around in his pocket, and although it wasn’t a weapon, he felt something cold and hard. Two attacks. If he could block or avoid Aureolus’s words twice, he might be able to somehow get in close enough. “Yes, but why do you not realize it?” The corners of Aureolus’s mouth turned up. “If something is broken, one need only fix it, correct? In the same way I fixed those destroyed buildings.” Kamijou immediately ground to a halt and looked at Aureolus. The alchemist continued, without much interest. “Ah, I have not told you yet, have I? Those students—today was certainly not their first time dying.” “Y-you…” A scathing-hot whiteness formed in Kamijou’s thoughts. Aureolus stuck a needle into the back of his neck and shifted his gaze back to him. “Correct. I am not so foolish as to be ignorant of my own sins.…Yes, that’s right. I failed myself. I continued to believe in the certain existence of somebody I wanted to save despite. Though I would not possibly have imagined it coming to this!” He flung the needle away as if he were scraping poison out of his body. “Bastard” But before Aureolus could weave his “words,” Kamijou stood. He reaffirmed the solid feeling in his pocket. Like it was natural, Aureolus began to say something that would crush the now-standing Kamijou, but before he could, Kamijou took the cell phone out of his pocket and hurled it at Aureolus with all his strength. “…Hm?” Aureolus was perplexed for a moment—and by then, Kamijou had already launched into a sprint. He didn’t think he could finish off the alchemist with a mere cell phone. All he needed to do was create a tiny opening for him to get up close. As expected, Aureolus’s attention switched to the cell phone. “…Stop the projectile. Fall to the ground, meaningless thrown stone.” In that slight loss of time, Kamijou had already closed the distance to half. Just one more attack. If he could somehow block Aureolus’s strike, he’d be able to switch to the offensive—! “The disguised guns in my hand again. Usage: firing. Execute preparations on my mark.” But, on the other hand, he inevitably needed to get past one more attack to reach him. Aureolus disposed of the guns fitted in the ten swords in his hands. As the empty hidden guns hit the floor with a clatter, the alchemist’s hands were gripping trick guns again, like having used that sound as the signal. Kamijou’s face tightened in tension, and at the moment Aureolus tried to announce his decisive words… “Innocentius!” But Aureolus’s movements jerked to a halt at Stiyl’s shout. Kamijou looked at Stiyl, stunned. Impossible. He couldn’t use that nuisance without hanging up rune-engraved cards around the room. Besides, the Witch-Hunter King was staking out the student dorms in order to protect Index, wasn’t it? It was a bluff. A pointless bluff used to extend Kamijou’s life, if only by a moment. The light of Aureolus’s gun barrel–like eyes turned to Stiyl. “Float into the air, ye priest of London,” muttered Aureolus, like he was setting him up for execution. In response, Stiyl floated up near the ceiling as if there were no gravity. Kamijou stopped moving in spite of himself. If he used Imagine Breaker, he could rescind Aureolus’s order, but the sorcerer was clearly too far away. “You fool! You can’t possibly defeat Aureolus as you are now! His weakness is those needles! You should know about medical scie—” Stiyl shouted with all his might to thaw the frozen Kamijou… …and Aureolus, glaring daggers at Stiyl, commanding: “Explode, ye runic magician.” The pop sound almost sounded comical. Just as he had declared, Stiyl’s body inflated like a balloon for a moment. Immediately afterward, his body burst out vehemently from within. A jumbled mass of blood, flesh, bones, organs, and muscles splattered all over the nearby surroundings. Parts of his flesh and blood instantly reached the ceiling, then spread out from there in a dome shape. It covered the vast room like a planetarium—here was a work of art of the sorcerer’s very blood and flesh. “…!” And the terrifying part was that his blood vessels were connected. His organs hadn’t been destroyed. It was almost like a train map. The red fluid his bared heart was pumping passed through his outstretched arteries, reached the organs that were dotted about, and returned back to the heart. He still wasn’t dead. Despite being in that state, Stiyl Magnus was very much alive. In pieces. The sorcerer’s possessions, cards with runes engraved on them, whipped up like a blizzard of cherry petals. Thump came a sound. It was the sound of the groggy Index passing out and collapsing atop the desk at the sight of such extremes. “…Damn…it.” Kamijou frantically worked his thoughts, which were on the verge of being paralyzed by the horrific situation. He used everything he had to kill the shriek rising in his throat. Stiyl hadn’t asked for help, even at the very end. The thing he wanted to tell Kamijou, even knowing things would turn out this way…He couldn’t possibly put that out of his mind. You fool! You can’t possibly defeat Aureolus as you are now! His weakness is those needles! You should know about medical scie— He recalled Stiyl’s words. His needles…Medical science? Now that he mentioned it, Aureolus had been hurriedly moving his hands around as if searching for something for a few moments now. The acupuncture needles he had kept stabbing, over and over, into the back of his neck…Was Stiyl talking about those? Academy City used even drugs for Ability Development. In this city, apparently knowledge of medicine and medicinal science was beyond that of the norm. His knowledge of acupuncture came to him like it was an English vocabulary word on a pop quiz. Leaving qigong and eastern mysteries aside, in terms of medical science, acupuncture was basically a way to directly stimulate one’s nerves. The stuff could relieve pain or control the functions of organs by triggering excitation. Back before they had anesthesia, it was probably valued pretty highly as an almost-magical way of blocking pain. …But what about it? Kamijou mentally tilted his head in confusion. As one might guess from the fact that needles aren’t used in modern surgery, the reality was that acupuncture couldn’t actually bring about such dramatic effects in somebody’s body. It wasn’t like narcotics, which could release “limiters” on your physical body or thoughts, either. The most it could do was directly stimulate your nerves, so it couldn’t do anything more than spur the release of endorphins, put them into an excited state, and ease anxiety, so— Anxiety? “Change contents. Suspend firing of disguised guns. Prepare for elimination of intruder using the blades.” Kamijou had forgotten to keep running and was blankly staring at Stiyl’s end, but he looked back to Aureolus at those words. The trick guns, which should have been staring death at him, spun around and around in the alchemist’s hands. Despite that, he couldn’t escape the one question that came to mind. Now that he had one question, many, many others appeared and dragged him down into them. Yeah. Something is strange. It happened with both Himegami and Stiyl. They were killed with single words, die and explode. If he could make everything and anything go his way, why did he need vampires or Deep Blood? If he could make anything exactly how he wanted, why didn’t he create a vampire with his own hands? Yeah, something’s definitely weird about this! No. If Aureolus Isard could really make anything and everything the way he wanted… Then why the hell didn’t Index turn back to look at Aureolus even one time? The ultimate Ars Magna, which distorted reality in accordance with Aureolus’s words. That wasn’t how it worked. What if it was sorcery that haphazardly distorted reality into whatever Aureolus thought? “Wa…it. Is that it…?” Stiyl had said that it wouldn’t be hard for Kamijou to beat Aureolus. Aureolus knew them; he knew Stiyl, Index, and Himegami. Because he was familiar with them, he knew for certain that even with their full power, they would never be able to fight on par with him. But Kamijou was the sole exception. He had only met Kamijou today—he was a totally unknown quantity. “Wha…Has your right hand annulled my own Golden Forge? Impossible. I have surely decided the death of Aisa Himegami. Does that right hand incorporate some heavenly mysteries?!” Of course he would feel anxiety at that. And if everything was aligning with his own thoughts, then that very anxiety was… “So…That’s it…,” murmured Kamijou in blank amazement. It was nothing. Now that he had figured out the trick, it was simple. However… “Hm. The source of your excessive confidence…It was that right hand, correct?” As he looked at Kamijou, Aureolus pushed the needle he removed from his inside pocket into his neck, looked at him casually, and said: “Then first, I will sever that right arm. Disguised guns, rotate your blades and fire.” There was no sound. The moment Aureolus waved his right hand, the afterimages of the trick swords were all over Kamijou, spinning like the blades on a fan at incredible speeds. He had his hands full just barely dealing with them. It was impossible to describe it as “something” had “flown at him.” One moment, the trick swords were in the alchemist’s hands… And the next, they had severed Touma Kamijou’s right arm and hit the wall behind him. Like a hot knife through a stick of butter, Kamijou’s right arm was cleanly sliced from his shoulder. Whoosh, whoosh—his right arm danced and turned in the air. There was no pain. There was no heat. Kamijou stared dumbfounded—just stared dumbfounded at his detached right arm. He cut off…my arm? Whoosh, whoosh—as he watched his arm fly through the air… He can do whatever he wants, he could have just crushed my heart with one word. Face not distorting with pain or terror, he had but a single question… But he decided to cut off my right arm first? He kneaded all the questions into a single idea and built it up… Even though he should be able to do whatever he wants. Fresh blood spewed out of where he had been cut, and as if he was remembering something… Because he couldn’t do anything about this power in this right hand. Certainly without pain and also without feeling warmth… He couldn’t take away my Imagine Breaker if he didn’t do something like cut off my entire arm along with it? Whoosh, whoosh. His arm spun and dropped to the floor, creating the dull sound of flesh being hit. In that moment, his idea, born from his doubts, resolved itself into certainty. Now that he knew what he had to do, the rest was simple. Crick. He heard a sound like a switch being flipped in his temples. 2 “Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha” At that moment, Aureolus involuntarily took a step back at the unforeseen event. He’d cut off the boy’s right arm, and yet he was laughing. He thought for a moment that he’d gone mad from intense pain and fear, but no. This was no more than normal laughter, made in sureness of victory. But what was truly strange was the fact that he could stay normal in this extreme situation at all. What…is that? The first thing Aureolus felt was not fear but discomfort. I know not what that boy is thinking, but this duel was over long ago. Therefore, any further discomfort is unnecessary. I shall kill him quickly. With a tinge of irritation, he tossed the needle in his neck aside. “Disguised gun, to my hands. Load out: magic bullets. Quantity: One is more than enough.” He waved his right hand. In reply, a rapier with a flintlock gun hidden inside materialized out of thin air. Satisfied with his own perfect technique, he continued to give orders. “Usage: crushing. In accordance with the original objective of a single bullet, fire and crush my prey’s skull.” Aureolus pulled the trigger. The gunpowder propelled the magic bullet out, aiming for the still-laughing boy’s eyes. No human could dodge that speed, nor could one block that force. The boy wouldn’t be able to do anything. The inside of his head would simply splatter like a tomato. That’s what should have happened. “Wha…?” He couldn’t believe his eyes. It wasn’t like the kid did anything. He thought he had fired the blue magic bullet accurately, but somehow, somewhere, it went wrong, passed by the boy’s face, and struck the wall behind him. Did I judge the distance wrongly? No… He declared an order once again. “Copy previous action. Usage: blind fire. Ten disguised guns firing at once.” Aureolus pulled ten of the camouflaged guns out of nothing, and bullets flew from their barrels that looked like a bouquet of flowers. However… Of the ten bullets that should have hit him precisely, not one of them could even deliver a glancing blow to the boy. A misfire?! Impossible…! Aureolus watched in disbelief—watched the boy who had twice avoided certain death. Splaaaash. An unbelievably large amount of fresh blood was spurting out of the open wound in the boy’s shoulder. The spray was showering his face in blood as well, his face was being painted with blotches of red. And yet still the boy laughed. He laughed as if the darkness in his body had all ejected from the gaping hole left by his severed arm. The boy wasn’t doing anything but laugh. Aureolus started to give a third execution order to the enemy before him, but then he wondered: However, can the Ars Magna even be dodged not once, but twice by pure coincidence, without some trick? The alchemist halted, startled at his misgivings. He knew the power of his technique the best. It wasn’t the gentle sort that could be dodged by sheer luck. Wait…is he doing something? Do I only not realize it?! The boy, laughing in earnest jubilation, stuck out a tongue to lick his lips as if they were covered with sauce. Not even a fallen vampire would do this—it was like he was reveling in the taste of his own blood. What…is this?! That was the reason Aureolus couldn’t help but feel unease in his heart. What is that? He can still fight? With that body? Without his right arm? Impossible. The possibility of that is nonexistent. He is already at the point where he would die of blood loss if I left him here. It is fine. There is no problem. There cannot be a problem. There shouldn’t be a problem! Yes—the very moment that he felt that “unease”… The boy should have been drained of all his strength after losing his arm, but he muttered something heroically anyway. His face was grinning. He was looking at the alchemist and grinning. “Kh…agh. You damned knave…There is no escape from my Ars Magna. Innumerable decapitation blades into position. Sever his head from his body immediately!” With those words, many giant guillotine blades came out of the ceiling above the boy’s head as if they were cutting through the surface of water. Each one was a blade of execution weighing one hundred kilograms. The hands of gravity pulled them down, but Kamijou simply continued to smile, without attempting to avoid them or defend himself against them. It is fine. He cannot dodge that. It will make a direct hit without doubt. If it makes a direct hit, then it will naturally finish him. That was my order. I definitely ordered that. I ordered it, I ordered it, I ordered that! Therefore, there is no problem. There is no issue, and thus no need for concern! Aureolus repeated it many times in his mind. He repeated it again and again. If things proceeded how he thought, in the way he thought, then that boy would die. He should die. He couldn’t possibly not die…but the more he thought about it, the more his misgivings inflated. It was like those misgivings were saying that all of his words were like prayers meant to suppress the great unease sleeping deep in his soul. In reality, and just as he thought, the many guillotine blades made direct contact with Kamijou’s neck. He had gotten him for sure this time. But all of the guillotines shattered to pieces like sugar cubes just from touching him. The boy was laughing. He was looking at the distressed alchemist—mercifully, cynically, pitifully, disdainfully, pleasurably, as if mocking him for fun. The boy was laughing… …with an expression that stated he’d already completely seen through to the weakness in his attack. Damn…him. By what means…?! He no longer needed to hold back. Aureolus pierced Kamijou with a sharp, stabbing look. “Simply die, bo” y, he tried to shout, but then the whispers of his heart wormed their way into his mind like noise. But will just that one word actually kill him? He fumbled with his quaking hand to bring out an acupuncture needle, but the many needles fell to the floor in a mess. But the alchemist couldn’t pay this any mind. As if stricken with horror, Aureolus Isard looked at Kamijou. At some point, the sharp look in his eyes had been chipped into a rusty blade. Even though he wasn’t thinking it, his legs strangely started to step back. The sole of his shoe stepped on something and crushed it. He had broken all the needles on the floor. Ars Magna distorted reality in accordance with his thoughts. However, if Aureolus was to think this will not do the trick or this cannot defeat him at the same time, then even that would become reality—it was a double-edged sword. That was the reason he did not create a vampire or Deep Blood “in the way he thought.” It was simple—somewhere in his brain he had thought, I cannot create something like that, and thus he was unable to. Aureolus’s words were analogous to bullets. Various ideas would get mixed into one’s thought processes. He couldn’t give resolute orders with something like that. It would even run the risk of self-destruction. Therefore, he stabilized his mental image into a bullet and fired it by delivering words from his mouth. It worked under the same principle as reciting English vocabulary words aloud to memorize them. At its roots, his Ars Magna was a sorcery that twisted reality in accordance with his thoughts, not with his words. However, after coming this far, Aureolus Isard had made a mistake controlling his words. Vague images in his head were coming into reality by themselves before he could stabilize them with words. It was no different from a handgun spontaneously discharging, completely independent of the user’s volition. Aureolus had an emergency method prepared in case things came to this sort of situation, but… Damn it, my needles…Where are my acupuncture needles? Why did I drop them? It is so that I won’t become like this, so I can kill my unease that I carry them around with me! Without them, I am Aureolus gasped. Without them, what? Halt, stop, do not think any more than that. I must not think thoughts that shall lead me to whence I cannot recover! The more he tried to avoid it, the deeper his thoughts fell into the hole. Aureolus was unable to stop thinking despite understanding that. Ceasing his thoughts would mean giving in. Like a snowman beginning to roll down a mountain, Aureolus’s misgivings grew without limit and started to lose their purpose. The boy in front of him spoke nothing. Wordlessly, silently, he began to walk toward Aureolus. This conversely plunged Aureolus into the depths of panic. He could not stop this boy. He did not know how to stop him. Therefore, Aureolus could do nothing. He stood there like a scarecrow, awaiting his visitation. There was no other alternative. The next thing he knew, the boy was right under his nose. How ironic this scene was, that he should stand to face him with the desk upon which Index was collapsed between the two of them. And even despite all of that, the alchemist found himself unable to move, like a snake had glared at him. I see. Stiyl, Index, Aisa Himegami. Every one of them was familiar. Therefore, I knew their true power and understood beforehand the fact that they could not stand against my Ars Magna. However—what is this boy? This is our first meeting. If I do not know his real potential, then I also do not know whether my Ars Magna will! “Hey.” His shoulders flinched at the boy’s sudden voice, like Aureolus was a child being lectured to. The boy spoke. “You bastard. You weren’t thinking that you could crush my Imagine Breaker just by cutting off my right arm, did you?” He bared his teeth, his eyes with such a glint that they might have fired red light from them. The boy spoke, sincerely delighted. Wha—Wait, don’t think unease ba Aureolus was able to pray. But he wasn’t able to stop thinking. In that instant. That hole, left by Kamijou’s missing right arm…Something strange happened to the flow of fresh blood erupting from it. Slosh. Something unknown, something transparent, slowly began to show its form, like scattering blood on a glass sculpture. Something leaped out of the hole in Kamijou’s right shoulder then, and it was certainly not a human arm. It was a jaw. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before, save in legends, for it had a length of more than ten meters and a ferocious brutality. It was the gargantuan, gigantic jaw of a dragon king. He should not have been able to see it, for it was transparent, but it was covered in blood. As if it were the boy’s own arm, he slowly opened its mouth, lined with fangs like saws. As if he was saying that this was the true form of the power packed into his right arm. One of the fangs made contact with the air. Nothing particularly large changed. However, something he couldn’t see had definitely been altered. Though the alchemist’s presence had been filling the room, it vanished, as if his very initiative, the ownership of this area, had been modified. Wha… Aureolus looked up in spite of himself to the distasteful planetarium of human flesh, created with Stiyl Magnus’s skin and blood. The carnage spread about the room began to slither toward one point…as if his order to “explode” had been canceled. It…can’t be. He is coming back? The same as Himegami, who I already destroyed! The moment he thought that, Stiyl dropped to the floor, not a scratch on him. Icy fear stabbed into Aureolus’s back. Without a doubt, his own insecurity had revived the sorcerer. Wait, this is no more than my unease, calm down, erase unease and I can erase this ridiculous thing Desperately biting down on the terror about to claw out his heart, Aureolus attempted one last resistance. This scenario should have been no more than something created by Aureolus’s own misgivings. So if he calmed himself down and got rid of this anxiety, the strange power in the boy should also disappear. But the light of the transparent dragon king’s shining eyes was brought to quietly glare at him. That was all it took to give Aureolus the illusion that his vision was fading from terror alone. I can’t…There’s no way. Immediately after thinking that, the jaw of the dragon king opened as wide as possible and devoured the alchemist from the head down.