From the outside, Ein Sof looked like a black sphere swallowing half the city—impossible to miss. For Ratatoskr, teetering on the edge of collapse, there was no time to calculate the damage it might cause to the surrounding area.
Origami attempted to break through it from range. Even throwing her last reserves of spiritual power at it was like hurling stones into a bottomless lake—each strike only a reminder of how little she had left.
Ain Soph Aur's pollen still drifted through the air, keeping her from approaching. Spending spiritual power on something so futile would leave her nothing to withstand Ellen's wrath.
"This is rather different from what we agreed on." Ellen raised her sword with cold composure. "Where have you hidden Itsuka Shiori?"
Ellen's feelings toward Itsuka Shiori were, to put it plainly, somewhat unfavorable—but she couldn't deny how pivotal Shiori was. Every Spirit orbited around her. Setting aside whether capturing Shiori could be used as leverage over the Spirits, DEM's objectives included one particular step: triggering Inversion.
Inversion—or, closer to what you might see in a drama, the berserk dark-side state—occurred only when a Spirit experienced absolute despair. In a sense, it was what a Spirit truly was at her core.
The power would annihilate any ordinary human body. But as the world's only remaining pure-blooded magicians, DEM's people possessed physiques capable of containing far more powerful Inversed Spirit crystals without losing control. Once that was achieved, all they'd need to do was run Shiori through in front of the right Spirit...
Beyond that, there was always the option of capturing Shiori directly for research, or using a Realizer formula to transfer her spiritual power to Westcott—groundwork for eventually absorbing the First Spirit's power.
Ellen's smile was thin and cold. "It seems your parents' grudge weighs very little after all. I was overestimating you."
"I'll return those words exactly as you gave them." Origami's gaze was still fixed on Ein Sof. "Raising one sword for an important person's revenge and then turning the same sword on another important person—I was the one overestimating DEM."
She kept her eyes on the black sphere. The First Spirit she had spent so long longing for was inside it. And...
"If only your fighting ability were as sharp as your tongue. Mordred." Her voice dropped colder. "How fitting—Mordred, of all things."
The knight of legend who betrayed King Arthur. That omen-laden CR-Unit name, and its wielder had now committed something tantamount to the same betrayal.
Ellen didn't waste time on her. Because at that moment, the person she had been waiting for finally arrived on scene.
Artemisia—formerly the crown ace of the UK's anti-Spirit special forces, the SSS, a powerful magician second only to Ellen herself. She had joined DEM for reasons unknown. Her CR-Unit bore the name Lancelot.
Lancelot.
"..." Ellen stared at Artemisia for a long moment.
"Hmph." She gave her a look of withering contempt.
Artemisia: "?"
On the other side, the attacking force was having rather a comfortable time of it. Ratatoskr—which had never once been on the back foot before—was suffering.
Fraxinus had lost over half its functions. Ratatoskr had no capacity to counter the DEM fleet on its own; the only option was to rely on the Spirits.
Naturally, the one standing in front of Fraxinus was Itsuka Kotori, Ratatoskr's commander. Or rather: Efreet, the Spirit known as the Flame Demon.
The name alone told you she commanded fire. And yet Kotori was, in truth, the worst of all the Spirits when it came to sustained combat—not because she was anything like a Kakashi, but because her power carried a flaw that directly fed on her emotions.
The urge to destroy. The moment she manifested as a Spirit, that craving was unavoidable. It grew, and she would gradually lose herself to it, becoming something that only wanted to fight and fight and fight. Even faced with a crisis like this, under normal circumstances it shouldn't have been her turn to step in.
"Can't be helped—someone has to deal with this mess." Kotori hefted her Angel in one hand, the massive flaming axe far too large for a single hand to properly grip.
This was Camael. It had two forms: axe and cannon. The cannon form, in particular, bore the distinction of having once destroyed Zafkiel—Kurumi Tokisaki's Angel—in its prime.
Without Fraxinus's Mystletainn to boost her, however, obliterating the defensive Territory of DEM's flagship in one shot was no simple feat.
That was fine.
"Let me show you something..."
She patted the great axe. Spiritual power surged into it a second time—and the resulting transformation had an oddly unnatural feel to it.
In between duties these past few days, she had spent every free moment poring over that strange book. It turned out to be a usage guide for some bizarre weapon, with an ancient dinosaur-like species as the assumed enemy. It reminded Kotori of Yimi shouting about Dinosaur People, so she figured wherever the book had come from, that world probably had dinosaurs.
The weapon the book described was deeply strange. In broad strokes:
With a sword in hand, there is nothing it cannot pierce. With a shield in hand, nothing can pierce it. Question: the sword strikes the shield—what happens? The wielder merges sword into shield. What emerges is an axe—splitting mountains, cleaving through gold and iron. The crowd is horrified and dares not argue further.
Kotori had neither sword nor shield, but she did have a great axe. And the bit about swinging the blade to accumulate energy in the phial—she figured spiritual power could substitute directly, even if it felt like something had lost some of its soul along the way.
Beyond the blazing fire, crackling arcs of electricity began appearing along Camael's edge, seemingly from nowhere. Kotori charged straight in, took a direct beam strike head-on using her other trait—"undying"—without even flinching, and swung.
Flame and lightning together. The shockwave alone was enough to flip parked vehicles. She brought it down with the force of a mountain cracking open—the pressure wave arrived before the axe even seemed to move.
"What in the world is—"
BOOM.
SAED!
The spatial quake that followed was substantial—like an aircraft carrier dropped straight onto the ground.
The deafening concussion, and the tremor that rattled all of Tenguu City, finally jolted Shiori awake where she had been left bound at the city's outskirts.
She looked down to assess her situation.
Turtle-shell bondage [(author censored)].
"..."
Shiori pressed her knees together. She confirmed there were no signs Origami had done anything to her. Then she summoned Sandalphon—Tohka's Angel—and sliced through the ropes.
She could use the Angels of Spirits whose power she had sealed, though the output was naturally diminished. Even basic flight remained something she'd never quite gotten right.
"Something serious is happening..." Shiori pressed her face to the window and looked out. The elevated position gave her a clear view: the massive black sphere at the city center, and the battleship now split cleanly in two, driven nose-first into the ground.
She squinted. Fine golden cracks were spreading outward across the surface of Ein Sof.
She had no idea what had happened, but Ellen arriving at her doorstep yesterday made it easy enough to guess—DEM had come to stir up trouble. And she had blacked out at the worst possible moment...
Shiori jumped out the window and flew low toward the city.
Origami wouldn't have left her a communications device. No way to reach Ratatoskr. Flying high would only attract DEM's attention first.
Though flying low wasn't exactly safe either.
"Good morning, Takamiya." The man who held real power at DEM—Westcott—had come in person.