"With me at her side — what reason does the Great Witch have to fear Witch Island's decline?"
"If all of humanity marches against her, I will hold them off—"
Well. In practice, it wasn't quite that dramatic.
The moonlit night was torn apart by the streak of a bowshot.
In Snow's sight, the figure that had always stood behind her — always been the one she protected — now looked impossibly immense.
Wings spread like the vault of heaven. Each feather capable of becoming a blade in its own right.
The boy's silhouette, lit by the flames along the shore, was both towering and strange.
"Shaya—!"
Snow clutched the windowsill, crying out.
In all the years this nightmare had haunted her, this was the first time another figure had appeared in it.
She hadn't wanted him here. This was a wound she'd always meant to carry alone.
She watched Shin plunge into that forest of steel.
For sixteen years — every time she closed her eyes — this was the nightmare waiting for her.
A fleet of ships beyond counting. Knights beyond numbering.
This was the extermination war that humanity had planned long in advance against Witch Island — aimed at seizing what the witches possessed, the Mystery they held. There had never been any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
The fleets of tens of thousands, soldiers wearing the cross, and the horns of judgement like the sound of the world's end.
BOOM —!
The instant Shin's form fell from the sky, one enormous warship cracked clean down the middle.
The strength to shake mountains and seas. Immunity to mortal steel. By pure numbers — by raw statistics — Shin was willing to say he wasn't at the absolute peak of what an organic being could be, but he wasn't far.
"Heretic! These witches harbor a demon—!"
"Destroy it! For the glory of God!"
The soldiers on deck scattered like ants in a disrupted nest.
They swung blades blessed with holy water. Crossbows rained bolts as dense as a downpour.
Ordinary arrows, even with iron tips, deflected off Shin's skin without leaving so much as a white mark.
No need for elaborate technique.
Shin simply launched a storm of feathers in every direction — then commanded each feather to transform into a beast of his own making, each carrying the same regenerative immortality as himself. In moments he was battling ten thousand soldiers on every side at once.
This was the flesh-transformation of a Pillar Man evolved into an Ultimate Being, now operating as the most efficient war machine imaginable.
These beasts didn't only share Shin's regeneration — they shared the defining trait of the Pillar Men's biological nature. Any organic matter that made contact with them was absorbed. And they were impervious to anything short of supernatural force.
They grew as they killed, swelling larger with each absorbed enemy — a plague of beasts from Scripture's darkest verses, hunting down every invader's existence.
Blood fell in sheets, staining the cold sea a dark crimson.
Snow watched from the window, those pale blue eyes complex with everything she could not name.
Once upon a time, she had wanted this. Wanted to unleash herself without restraint.
But the Witch Clan's nature — that quality the others called the 劣根性, the fatal flaw — had shackled her hands and feet like an invisible chain. She could only watch. Watch her clanswomen fall one by one, and numb herself with the lie she called the future.
And now — the child she had raised was doing, in her place, the thing she had never dared to do. Cutting through the chains that had bound her own heart.
"Watch out — they're coming—!"
Snow's eyes snapped into focus.
In the churning mass of the crowd below, she had spotted something — a cluster of figures in deep black priest's vestments, moving with a strange, precise agility that set them apart entirely. From their sleeves slid not crucifixes but slender bladed implements, compact and sharp as throwing knives.
Shin had noticed them too.
He sidestepped an incoming projectile, snatched one of the blades out of the air, and held it up.
Cross-shaped hilt. Matte black throughout. Radiating a subtle cursed aura — specifically attuned to spiritual, non-human beings.
"Black Keys?"
Shin's eyebrow rose.
The resemblance was far too strong to be coincidental. There was no mistaking it.
Where did these come from? Was this really still a witch-trial setting? Because Holy Church Executors deploying Black Keys here would mean — are we about to get the Burial Agency next?
But Shin had no time to dig deeper into the question.
Because from the fleet's center — from the flagship, vast as a floating fortress — a far more threatening aura had risen.
An aged bishop emerged, slowly, from an ornate wooden case, and lifted from it a long spear.
The spear blazed with light the color of the sun from every inch of its length. Its tip was spiral-shaped.
Even as a replica, the moment its light fell across the deck, every soldier who had been cowering in fear before Shin's slaughter straightened — became devout.
This was a replica of the holy relic known as the Holy Spear.
Yes — that one. The one famed throughout Christendom for piercing the Son of God himself.
Its name carved itself into Shin's mind the moment he laid eyes on it, even though he had never seen it before.
And this was still only a dream.
As a sacred weapon, it seemed to perceive all things that stood against humanity as its enemy — able to pierce through any evil. Before it had even been activated, Shin could already feel the pressure radiating from it — was this the unexpected variable?
"Heretic — in the face of the Holy Miracle, return to dust!"
The bishop roared. The Holy Spear erupted — a fissure of golden light tore through space and drove straight at Shin's chest.
Shin's expression hardened. He could feel the weight of that strike — an aura that, in some strange way, reminded him faintly of what he'd sensed from Heaven-Attained DIO.
He had even braced for the possibility that his body would take catastrophic damage and would need to rely on regeneration to recover.
But in the very next second — something theatrical happened.
The golden fissure struck Shin's chest.
No explosion. No sensation of being run through.
That spear — for all its spectacle — dissolved the instant it touched Shin's skin, like a soap bubble meeting a finger. A quiet pop, and it was gone.
Not just the light — the spear itself shattered into motes of radiance that floated away on the air. Not so much as a single hair of Shin's had been disturbed.
The bishop froze.
"Why?"
"Why can the replica of the Holy Spear not harm you — a non-human creature? It should be the most effective weapon against such things—!"
To be continued…