Chapter 103

Guiding Force flowed through the dagger that formed the core of the Guiding gun, setting a crest conjuring into motion. Guiding Force: Connect—Dagger Gun, Crest—Invoke [Thunderclap] When Flarette pulled the trigger, the gun fired a bullet infused with the properties of Thunderclap. “Egh?!” The white-robed priestess who’d foolishly assumed it was an ordinary Guiding gun she could handle with Guiding Enhancement took a direct hit. While she was stunned and vulnerable, Flarette delivered a swift kick to her forehead. That one blow from a slender leg was enough to knock the priestess unconscious. Teach clicked her tongue at her inexperienced subordinate. Flarette’s special Guiding gun could turn crest conjurings into bullets and fire them. Clearly, it wasn’t a weapon to be underestimated. “Surround her.” Even a woman down, Teach kept calm as she delivered her order. The remaining two white-robed priestesses reacted promptly. Without moving from where they stood, they opened their scriptures and worked conjurings. Flarette moved to retreat, but Teach wouldn’t allow it. She drew a rapier with her right hand and lunged with a quick thrust. Forced into close combat, Flarette drew a dagger from her right thigh. A dagger in one hand and a Guiding gun in the other made for an unusual fighting style. She used the former as a shield to parry the rapier as she fired with the latter. Her expression unwavering, Teach expertly employed her Barrier to deflect the bullet while aiming for Flarette’s vitals with sharp strikes. The pair appeared evenly matched. The difference was one had allies. Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 2:5—Invoke [Rejoice, for the wall that surrounds a pious flock of sheep shall never crumble.] After a few moments, the two white-robed priestesses simultaneously invoked a scripture conjuring. Walls of pure Guiding Light erupted in front of and behind Flarette. They were using a powerful defense conjuring to block off the alley. While Teach worked to keep Flarette locked in battle with her rapier, she charged her scripture with Guiding Force. A strong thrust from her forced Flarette to block, locking their blades. Suddenly, the battle came to a standstill. Seeing the scripture shine with Guiding Light in her opponent’s hand, Flarette flashed a bitter look. “You would really go that far?” “At this point, taking you down with me would be an ideal victory.” With that, Teach activated the scripture conjuring behind her back. Scripture, 3:1—Invoke [And the oncoming enemy did hear the tolling of the bell.] A bell of Guiding Light appeared. Buildings on the left and right formed the alley, while barrier conjurings closed off the front and rear and Teach’s attack loomed above. Flarette was surrounded. There was nowhere to run. Since she no longer had a scripture, she wouldn’t be able to produce a conjuring strong enough to break free. However, Teach was in range of her own conjuring. “Die with me and pay for your sins.” Faced with an attack meant to destroy them both, Flarette pointed the muzzle of her glowing gun at the sky. Teach furrowed her brow. Shooting the scripture conjuring with a crest-conjuring bullet wouldn’t be enough to destroy it. Even for a last resort, this seemed poorly thought-out. “…Triple Speed.” After a whisper from Flarette, the Guiding Branches that formed the barrel of her gun changed shape. Creaking and snapping, the Guiding gun became thicker and rougher as it drew a different kind of Guiding Force from within her. Guiding Force: Connect—Improper Communion, Pure Concept [Time]—Invoke [Decay Acceleration → Guiding Bullet] She pulled the Guiding gun’s trigger. A low booming sound tore through the air. The bullet from the Guiding gun fired at a far higher rate of rotation and speed than before, blowing the conjured bell to pieces. The afterglow of the conjured phenomenon rained down in a harmless shimmer. The inexplicable sight of a scripture conjuring being destroyed by such a weak weapon stunned the white-robed priestesses. Even Teach, the only priestess who understood what had occurred, stared in bewilderment. “It can’t be…” The inexperienced white-robed priestesses and the spectating girl had no way of comprehending, but Teach knew the shocking truth. Flarette had used a Pure Concept. Pure Concept conjurings were only usable by Otherworlders. Flarette shouldn’t have had access to them. “What did you do…? What kind of taboo allows you the power of a damned Pure Concept?!” Her shock swiftly turned to fury. No human of this world had ever managed to acquire a Pure Concept, no matter what dreadful taboos they attempted. Not Genom Cthulha, the conqueror of the eastern Wild Frontier. Not Orwell, the fallen archbishop who once bested a dragonblight. There weren’t even records of anyone achieving it during the time of the ancient civilization, the peak of humanity. And yet Flarette had just flagrantly demonstrated the use of a Pure Concept. “Impossible… What did you sacrifice?! What kind of price did you pay to gain a Pure Concept?!” “…My dearest friend.” Flarette’s voice was quiet and cool. She pointed the shining barrel at her opponent. “So I’m going to get her back, no matter how much Time it takes.” The barrel, leveled squarely at Teach, grew even larger. Since it was made with the crest conjuring Guiding Branch, Flarette could change its shape however she pleased. “Quintuple Speed.” Teach’s face turned pale when she heard these words. There was another reason the barrel of Flarette’s gun was made with Guiding Branches. No ordinary one could withstand the force of a bullet enhanced by a Pure Concept. The gun’s body had to be expendable and reusable, and so it was built and altered with Guiding Force manipulation to take the perfect shape for the accelerated bullets. If Flarette’s words were to be believed, she destroyed the scripture attack conjuring by accelerating the Guiding bullet to triple speed. If she fired one at an even higher level, it might pierce through a defensive scripture conjuring, too. “Dammit!” Guiding Force: Connect—Rapier, Crest—Invoke [Thrust: Expansion] The Guiding gun was now a far more terrifying weapon than any scripture conjuring. Teach quickly invoked the crest conjuring in her rapier and attacked with a diagonal cut, desperately trying to stop Flarette from firing. The rapier was enveloped by a blade of Guiding Light that extended its range as it plunged for Flarette. However, the Guiding gun was only a diversion. Flarette, who’d deliberately demonstrated the Guiding gun’s power to destroy a crest conjuring to frighten her opponent, smoothly stepped forward. She dodged the rapier thrust and closed in on Teach, charging the dagger in her right hand with Guiding Force. Guiding Force: Connect—Dagger, Crest—Double Invoke [Guiding Thread, Gale] The crest conjuring activated as Flarette threw the dagger, and a blast of air drove it right into the shoulder of one of the white-robed priestesses. Teach, who’d been counting on backup from her subordinates, reacted a second too late. That brief delay sealed her fate. Before Teach could pull back her rapier, Flarette closed the distance between them, pressed the muzzle of her gun to the pit of Teach’s stomach, and fired point-blank. There was no time to activate a barrier crest conjuring. Even with Guiding Enhancement, the impact was too great for Teach to stay conscious. “Damn you…” “Too slow.” The two white-robes flew into a rage at their leader’s defeat, but Flarette was too much. She moved more quickly than they could react, striking each woman on the side of the head with the hilt of her dagger to knock them out. Flarette had won without so much as a scratch. In the middle of retrieving her mantle, she suddenly looked at the girl who was sitting nearby, stunned. “Let’s see… You’re not hurt, are you?” “N-no.” “Thank goodness. That must have been frightening, though.” Flarette smiled brightly. The girl got a close look at her face—perfect bone structure, long lashes framing lovely eyes. As the girl became increasingly aware of Flarette’s shocking beauty, her heart pounded in her ears. Flarette reached out and gently prodded the girl’s nose. “From now on, you mustn’t let your curiosity get you mixed up with bad people like me, understand?” Despite the warning, the young woman’s attitude was incredibly gentle and kind. With one last smile at the girl, who couldn’t manage a response, Flarette walked away. Once she was alone, the girl finally stood, her face still flushed. A back-alley battle. A clash between priestesses and a wanted criminal. Her pulse raced after experiencing excitement unlike anything she’d known in her normal life. Her cheeks felt warm despite the cold wind. Before she knew it, she was walking, but not for home. Her motivated feet took her to the engineer’s workshop. The engineer was just beginning to work on the heating vessel she’d left there when she entered. “Now what? Did you forget something or—” “Please, make me your apprentice!” the girl shouted, bowing deeply. “Uh… What?” The engineer blinked in surprise at the sudden plea. “Where’d this come from?” “Duh!” The girl raised her head urgently. “If I work here, I might get to see that lady again!” Her eyes sparkled. The man’s expression hardened. “Forget it. Trust me, it’s for your own good.” “I won’t! I’m going to be your apprentice! Looking forward to working with you, boss!” “Whaddya mean, ‘boss’? Seriously, give up alrea— Hey, don’t grab on to me!” “I won’t give up! Never! Not until you make me your apprentice! I swear it!” The girl clung to the conjuring engineer, even as he tried to push her away. Someday, Flarette would be in for a surprise when she saw this pair, but that is a story for another time. Unbelievably large spheres of white liquid floated overhead. Spheres of all sizes orbited around the largest one in the center as they traveled across the sky. The massive shapes, not unlike a planetary system in appearance, were far too large to defy gravity. If even the smallest one fell, it could easily crush an entire town. The miniature cosmos floating in the sky made for a truly stunning sight. “So that’s the Starhusk…” The young woman who’d defeated the priestesses in the back alley—Flarette, also known as Menou—whispered the name of the phenomenon floating overhead. These giant spheres were, together, one of the Four Major Human Errors that had wreaked irreparable damage on this world. They made for an intimidating sight, but they actually hadn’t caused any harm in recent memory. The Starhusk seemed more benign than the other three, and it was considered harmless despite being a remnant of one of the Human Errors that destroyed the ancient civilization. However, these same spheres had once gouged a massive hole in the center of the northern continent. Menou had always thought that disaster was the result of a Pure Concept running wild—an Otherworlder who’d become a Human Error. But now she had a different view. According to someone who’d witnessed the events of a thousand years ago, the floating white spheres known as the Starhusk were actually a massive weapon. During the time of the ancient civilization, when human technology was at its peak, this conjured weapon of war was built to be even more powerful than Otherworlders, to keep them in check. It was named the Starhusk because its invoked conjuring could reduce heavenly bodies to empty shells. Why would anyone create such a thing? “I wonder what it must have felt like to see the future…” Star had been the wisest of the Pure Concepts. While thinking of the person who developed the Starhusk a millennium ago, Menou turned her gaze from the sky to the path ahead. A conjured weapon developed to outclass Human Errors might be the only way to destroy Hakua Shirakami. Menou’s thoughts strayed to the mortal enemy who shared her face as she made for the edge of town. By fighting Teach and the other Executioners, Menou had given away her location. The priestesses would undoubtedly report in as soon as they woke up. Even if Menou had killed them, the end result would be the same. The Faust would realize something was amiss when the group’s regular report didn’t come in. Killing them to buy a little extra time wasn’t worth it. “I’m not an Executioner anymore, after all.” Menou sighed a puff of white air, yet she felt no agitation or regret. She would save anyone she could and refrain from murdering anyone unless necessary. She had no desire to kill people just for her own benefit. She would live without shame so that she could say Good morning with a smile when her dear friend finally woke from her sleep. “This is the best way forward. Right, Akari?” There was no one to reply, of course. Carrying both right and wrong with her, Menou left town to find a woman in goggles who waited for her. The woman, who had olive-brown skin and looked to be in her early twenties, gave Menou a friendly wave. “Heya, li’l Menou!” The pale violet hair that came down past her waist fluttered in the wind. She was alluringly beautiful, with relaxed and youthful features. Clad in vertical-striped pants and a very short jacket, she showed a considerable amount of her bronze skin despite the bitter northern chill. A tattoo of a cog sat below her navel, an odd fashion statement, perhaps. “I saw the whole thing, kiddo. Leave it to you to drop everything and rescue some random girl, even though we’re supposed to be avoiding combat of any kind.” Despite her aggressively glamorous looks and curvaceous adult figure, the woman wore a very childlike grin as she spread her arms wide. “You’re such a nice girl, Menou! I’m so proud! Now, come on, give your big sister a hug! Let me squeeze you and tell you what a good girl you are!” “Thanks, but I’ll pass, Abbie.” “Whaaat? You don’t wanna? C’mon, let me soothe your soul, sweetie!” Menou evaded the woman’s grasp, causing her to slump dejectedly. Her name was Abbie, and she had appeared six months ago, shortly after Menou fled the holy land. At a glance, she was a gorgeous woman who happened to be a little strange. But in truth, she wasn’t human at all. She was a conjured soldier, one of the intelligent beings said to be part of an advanced form of humanity created by one of the Four Major Human Errors, the Mechanical Society. “Honestly, I don’t know why you insist on treating me like a child,” Menou said. “I’m a big sister figure, and it’s my duty to treat all you kiddos like my little siblings and reward you for being good! Children are the future, you know. It’s important to treat youngsters right! Don’t you get it?!” “No, and it’s frankly disturbing. Even Sahara was afraid of you.” Abbie didn’t seem discouraged beneath Menou’s unamused look. She put a hand to her ample chest, which was sure to draw stares from men and women alike. “So you say, but you still rely on me like a big sister, Menou! I was right! I’ve got to coddle you! Bring it in, kiddo!” “I wouldn’t say I rely on you, it’s just… You’re very useful.” “Ugh, a kid treating me like a tool… Well, it doesn’t feel half-bad! You can rely on your useful big sister as much as you want, little sis!” “I’ll do my best not to, thanks. This is giving me the creeps.” Half a year had passed since Abbie showed up, hanging off Sahara, and Menou’s opinion of everything about her, excluding her particular talent, dropped by the day. Abbie was strangely obsessed with treating all her juniors like little siblings, to the point that her reason for helping them was “because you’re fighting Hakua, who’s old.” It was an intense and bizarre fixation. “Also, there are no adult dragonflies at this time of year. You ought to pick a better creature for spying.” “Ohhh. Got it… I forgot organic life-forms have life cycles that depend on seasons and all that. I haven’t gotten used to this environment yet.” Abbie scratched her cheek sheepishly. A dragonfly rested on her fingertip. Although it wasn’t noticeable from far away, one could see on very close inspection that it was actually an inorganic creation formed of cogs and other tiny parts. It was a conjured soldier, if a very small one. The facsimile insect wiggled under Abbie’s olive-brown skin and disappeared, fusing back into her. Abbie’s conjurings were of a different nature from the ones Menou used. They were Concept of Primary Color conjurings. These miraculous conjurings employed the purest colors in the world—red, blue, and green—as materials to produce anything imaginable. These Pure Concepts were the closest one could get to a divine creator, seemingly making something out of nothing. “So how was the Guiding gun your nice big sister gave you? Looked like you gave it a trial run in the fight. Does it need any fine-tuning?” “I think it should be fine as is for now.” Menou patted the dagger gun stowed on her left leg through her coat. It was made from the crest dagger that had belonged to Menou’s parental figure, Flare, retaining the crest functions while adding the Guiding gun functionality. “It operates well as a ranged weapon and synchronizes with the dagger crests perfectly.” It had been a little over six months since her final showdown with Flare in the holy land, and Menou had changed dramatically. She and Akari had made a Guiding Force connection in the land of salt. Ever since, Menou had been able to tap into Akari’s Guiding Force, increasing the amount at her disposal significantly. And it wasn’t just her pool of Guiding Force that had been enhanced. Menou was now able to use Akari’s Pure Concept, something normally only accessible to Otherworlders. By linking their souls together, two people could essentially become one. In terms of conjuring, Menou was now united with Akari, which meant she could manipulate Time. However, controlling a Pure Concept was difficult, even for someone as skilled at Guiding Force manipulation as Menou. After some six months of trial and error, she had reached the solution—altering a dagger into a special Guiding gun. “It seems I can control the Pure Concept well enough now. I shouldn’t have to worry about it eating away at my soul.” “Heh-heh. Your big sister knows what she’s doing! My work is nothing like an ordinary Guiding gun!” Menou had first set her eyes on Guiding guns based on their ability to automatically draw out the user’s Guiding Force and fire it. This Guiding gun, altered to suit Menou, served as an intermediary to automatically pull the Pure Concept out from her connection with Akari. That way, Menou could focus on constructing the Time conjuring without distraction. “At any rate, we’d better get moving. Now that I’ve fought with the Faust, they’ll know we’ve left Grisarika for the northern continent. We need to get away before anyone else comes after us.” “Okay, fiiine.” Abbie’s hand glowed with pure blue Guiding Light. She pressed her glowing palm to the cog symbol on her abdomen. Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Primary Blue Stone, Inner Seal Conjuration—Activate [Primary Blue, Arachnid Rider] BOOM, BOOM, BOOM… The materials drawn from within Abbie rumbled eight times, shaking the ground, until thick metallic legs reflected the Guiding Light. “C’mere, little sis. Hop on board!” Sitting astride the giant blue armored spider, Abbie beckoned Menou cheerfully. Conjured soldiers created in the eastern Wild Frontier with all three Primary Colors were the only intelligent life-forms on the level of humanity, and they were highly skilled conjurers from the moment of their creation. Without being taught by anyone, Abbie and her kind could create unique Guiding vessels. They naturally absorbed materials as they grew, combined them within their bodies, and released them, allowing them to make exceptional conjured objects with far more speed and skill than any human. Since Menou had entered the Mechanical Society in the eastern Wild Frontier in the past half a year and traveled under Abbie’s guidance, she was uniquely aware of conjured soldiers’ terrifying ability to create. “You can steer, Menou, and I’ll ride in back. It can be left to drive itself, too, but it’s also designed so that you can command it with Guiding Force manipulation from the outside. And don’t worry, your big sis will provide the materials to keep its Guiding engine running!” “You really are awfully useful, Abbie… I need to make sure not to rely on your help too much.” “Awww, whaaat? I’ll be sooo sad if you don’t depend on me like a sister. Sob, sob. You’re so independent that it’s hard to coddle you… But kids like you make me want to convince you to lean on me so much that you’ll be totally lost without me!” As soon as Menou climbed aboard, Abbie latched on to her from behind. Her body felt no different from a human’s. There was no indication of the massive amounts of material and Guiding Force contained within. It was truly a near-perfect mimicry. The spider-shaped conjured soldier began to move. Through some feat of engineering, there was surprisingly little shaking for the riders. Their destination was the largest sphere at the center of the Starhusk. “It took six months to prepare for this.” The Lord had the greatest power on the continent. In truth, she was Hakua Shirakami, an Otherworlder with the Pure Concept of Ivory. In her efforts to fight back against this formidable foe, Menou had joined forces with Ashuna, the youngest princess of Grisarika Kingdom, to bring about change to ensure that the kingdom wouldn’t fall into Hakua’s grasp. Menou reached up toward the sky and clenched her fist tight, as if to grab the white sphere overhead. Her goal was somewhere in that cloudy white liquid. “First, we’re going to take the Starhusk for ourselves.” The white spheres that traversed the northern sky were one of the Four Major Human Errors, given form by making the center of the northern region float and wander through the air. They were also a superweapon from the ancient civilization. Menou and company had come here to steal the Starhusk and make it their own. “Mm-hmm, that’s all well and good, li’l Menou. But now that we’re in the north, there is something I wanted your opinion about.” “What is it?” It was unusual for Abbie to ask for another’s thoughts on anything. As Menou looked at her, Abbie abruptly removed her goggles. Her irises were an unbelievably clear marine blue, while her sclerae were pure black. With her mythically beautiful eyes revealed, Abbie put a hand on her own shadow. The hand promptly sank right into the shadow. Menou had grown familiar with this seemingly inexplicable phenomenon. She raised an eyebrow in trepidation.