“Come on! You’re not supposed to use those like that, are you?!” “Well, there’s no rule saying you can’t, and my current boss didn’t try to stop me. It’s important to innovate, you know?” “No one would ever try to do that, even if they did come up with the idea! Someone’s gotta stop you! Why did they give you so many scriptures anyway?! I thought those were a one-per-person deal!” “It’s a perk of being an Inquisitor, so there!” Momo swung the makeshift flail at Sahara, sending the suitcase flying toward her face at an alarming speed. “Urgh!” Sahara quickly bent backward to avoid the scripture-laden suitcase, but Momo’s attack didn’t stop at the physical. Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 13:13—Invoke [The spirit of a martyr is so precious, it is almost foolish.] “Gweh?!” The scriptures attached to the outside blew up behind her. Momo had used the coping saw to channel Guiding Force and remotely invoke the conjuring. Just barely dodging a scripture conjuring like that wasn’t enough to get Sahara completely out of harm’s way. The blast swept her off her feet, and Momo took that opportunity to close in on her, turning her weapon back into a hammer and raising it high. Sahara immediately raised her right arm. Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Prosthetic Arm. The Guiding prosthetic still didn’t activate. It had actually gotten worse: This time, Sahara’s Guiding Force didn’t flow into the arm at all. “Whyyyy?!” The hammer collided with Sahara’s Guiding prosthetic arm. Immediately, the white suitcase went flying. Sahara froze, confused that she had won the clash so easily. However, the reason the impact was so much lighter than she expected was simple: Momo had deactivated the Anchor on the saw handle at the moment of impact. While Sahara was distracted by the collision, the unleashed coping saw wrapped around her. The outcome of their battle six months ago flashed across Sahara’s mind. Momo tightened her grip. “Nngh!” Just before the coping saw could constrict around her neck, Sahara thrust her Guiding prosthetic into the gap. She just barely made it. At least she’d managed to avoid losing her head like last time. “Why…you…!” Sahara focused all her attention on her prosthetic arm. “Don’t underestimate me! I beat Genom and got some crazy new power—” “Then why do your conjurings keep failing?” Sahara winced at the pointed observation. She kept trying to put Guiding Force into her prosthetic, but she couldn’t produce the kind of energy that had manifested when she defeated Genom. After the second failure, it dawned on Sahara. The Guiding prosthetic didn’t produce Guiding Force. She had to absorb it from the outside, like she had in the fight against Genom. Perhaps when her arm transformed back then, it was a one-time-only ability. “Maybe your Guiding prosthetic can’t use the same conjurings as before because it’s been altered somehow? Not that I know the details.” It was a very plausible theory. As Sahara fell silent, Momo glared at her coolly. “You really haven’t made any progress at all, have you…? Aren’t you embarrassed to be so weak?” “Oh, shut up!” She’d given up on improving her battle skills after she’d lost to Menou. “Now, whatever shall I do with you?” “Hmph, threats aren’t going to work on me!” Sahara was defiant, even with her life in Momo’s hands. “I bet you haven’t actually betrayed Menou at all, have you?!” “Do you really need to ask such an obvious question?” Momo, supposedly Michele’s subordinate now, calmly confirmed Sahara’s suspicions. Anyone who knew Momo would have the same thought. Momo was on the church’s side to help Menou in secret. And yet…a cold sweat ran down Sahara’s back. Even after six months of working undercover in the church for Menou’s sake, there was no sign that Momo had ever leaked information to Menou. Sahara had been working with Menou directly all along. If she was regularly in contact with Momo, Sahara would have noticed. In other words, Momo was acting completely independently of Menou’s wishes. After constantly fawning over her precious “darling” for so many years, Momo had chosen to work apart from Menou. It wasn’t hard to imagine, then, that she was acting on goals she didn’t want Menou to know. Given Momo’s personality, taking actions for Menou’s sake didn’t necessarily mean assisting Menou, especially not now. If Momo intended to stop Menou, that would explain why she would work with Michele to destroy the Mechanical Society. Most importantly, if it was “for Menou’s sake,” Momo wouldn’t hesitate to kill Sahara. The fact that she was Menou’s ally wouldn’t guarantee Sahara’s safety. Sure enough, Momo’s next words validated Sahara’s fears. “It wouldn’t be too bad for my darling if you died anyway, right?” “Well… No, I guess maybe not…?” The worst part was that she couldn’t deny it. If anything, Sahara might have preferred to die than to declare herself important to Menou. “You even picked on her at the monastery. My darling is so kindhearted, letting scum like you work with her…” Sahara snorted. “You’re still dragging up that ancient history? Makes sense, since you’re such a drag…” “I’ll talk about it forever, thank you. Why, I’ll even go on talking about it when you’re finally in the grave.” “You’re going to visit my grave? That’s so creepy. I’d rather you didn’t…” “Ah, of course, my apologies. I forgot no one in the world would bother making a grave for someone like you!” The two girls glared at each other. Even with her life on the line, Sahara couldn’t let go of her deep-seated grudge against Momo. “It would be worth killing you right here and now just to get Michele to trust me more, I suppose.” “Hey, the conjured soldiers love me, you know! If you kill me now, you’ll incur the wrath of everyone who controls the Mechanical Society!” As Sahara started making arbitrary threats to save her own hide, Momo’s eyes narrowed. “…Listen. I’m telling you not to interfere for now.” “…For now?” “That’s right.” As Sahara fell silent, Momo beamed at her. Of course, the smile was purely intended to intimidate her. “We’ll make a deal. You can only attack the way I tell you to until I say it’s okay to do otherwise.” “So I have to do what you say…?” “Exactly. I’ll accept a certain amount of interference, and naturally, I’ll have to counterattack so I don’t look suspicious.” Sahara was on the offensive, and Momo had been put in charge of defense. If they worked together, they could delay the construction of the ceremonial hall. “Right… I suppose there are no downsides except that it makes me mad.” In other words, it was purely a matter of Sahara’s feelings. “It’s just a charade until Michele can move again. Let’s be smart about our strategies.” Then Momo asked the question that mattered to her most. “What is my darling doing right now?” There was a school building in the central zone of the Mechanical Society. At a glance, it looked like an ordinary white three-story building, but it was linked to the entirety of the Mechanical Society. If the interior was modified by conjurings, the Mechanical Society itself would change accordingly. The opposite held true as well: If there were changes in the Mechanical Society, the school interior would transform. The classroom Sahara had seen vanish not long ago was one such instance. Abbie was leading Menou and Maya through the mazelike halls. “This suuuucks,” she groaned dramatically. “It’s sooo embarrassing that my terminal got taken over like that. I’m seriously super sorry, li’l Menou. That must have been a hassle for you.” “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” While it had resulted in a battle, destroying Abbie’s hacked terminal had resolved the issue. “I still can’t believe we need an activation key for the otherworld repatriation circle. I suppose that was a miscalculation on my part.” “Nono should’ve just told us, darn it!” Maya puffed up her cheeks indignantly at her old friend’s discourtesy. Nono was the one who told them about the Starhusk and the environment control tower in the first place. But, knowing Nono, it was possible she’d planned for them to need to search for the activation key. She might have left that information out deliberately so Menou and company would have to meet the Pure Concept of Vessel: Ran Gadou. That was exactly the sort of thing Nono Hoshizaki would do. “What in the world was she plotting, I wonder…?” “Your guess is as good as mine…” While Nono acted friendly, bright, and easy to read, she was actually mistrustful, dark, and difficult to understand. Unfortunately, Maya hadn’t realized that until after Nono was already gone. “Well, going to ask for the activation key directly certainly sounds straightforward, but I’m guessing it’s not going to be that easy.” “Hee-hee-hee. Don’t worry, you’ve got me on your side!” Maya put a hand to her chest proudly, and with good reason. Since her powers had a natural advantage, conjuring-wise, over the Pure Concept of Vessel, she was a reassuring ally to have on this quest. The corridor they were traversing was impossibly long, at least from the outside. It was like a bridge with no handrails. Maya clung to the hem of Menou’s clothes as she shuffled along nervously. “Although… Abbie. The conjured soldiers think Ran Gadou is still alive as a human, don’t they?” “Huh?” It was Maya who reacted in surprise to Menou’s question. Her dark eyes went wide. “Yeah, we do. It’s never been confirmed, but I’m pretty sure of it.” “Whaaat?!” Maya exclaimed even louder this time. Under normal circumstances, it would be impossible for a human from a thousand years ago to be alive, especially for Otherworlders, who turned into Human Errors when they lost all their memories. And it was well known that Vessel had become a Human Error long ago. “You mean Gadou isn’t a Human Error? But how could anyone still be alive after so long?!” This was quite a fuss for someone born a thousand years ago herself. Menou and Abbie exchanged glances, then shrugged almost in unison. “Well, I suppose I understand your surprise, since you only just came back as a person quite recently…” Maya was living proof that a Human Error could turn back into a human if their memories were restored, no matter how many years had passed. “But one way or another, all Pure Concepts can achieve physical immortality with relative ease if they’re used the right way.” “I mean, I guess so…” “So if they can find a way to preserve their memories, they can easily survive for a thousand years.” As they were discussing this, they finally reached the end of the long hallway. The view opened up before them. In the center of the rooftop loomed a pure black monolith. Abbie stopped in front of the dark structure. “This is as far as I can take you.” Menou, too, drew closer to the mysterious towering object. It wasn’t just jet-black. It looked murky, as if all the colors had merged into a deep blackness. “So this is it…” “Yep. That’s our progenitor, where all our materials are born. Or to be precise, that’s the entrance to our progenitor’s ‘Chamber.’” The monolith looked so familiar that Maya instinctively reached out to it. It reminded her of the floating object she had known so long ago. Though it was much larger than it had been a thousand years ago, it felt exactly the same to the touch. Menou gazed at it, too, murmuring to herself. “A person who’s continually turning into a Human Error…” Most people considered the Mechanical Society itself a Human Error, but Abbie and the other conjured soldiers had a deeper understanding of the Human Error of Vessel than any human did. Ran Gadou, holder of the Pure Concept of Vessel, continuously produced tiny Human Errors by splitting her soul into ever-smaller pieces. The Primary Color crystals were fragments of Ran Gadou’s emotions that had splintered from their source. It was theorized, more or less correctly, that they were minuscule Human Errors in themselves. So Ran Gadou was keeping her personality and mind intact by sacrificing pieces of her fragmented spirit. These fragments that had once been part of a human’s heart formed a complex mix and eventually created conjured soldiers with minds of their own. At their core, Abbie and the other conjured soldiers were all members of the Human Error of Vessel. “Are you really going in there?” Abbie lowered her voice, sounding worried. “The space inside is so dense that even we can’t get in, let alone human beings, you know?” “That’s why I brought Maya to help out.” “…Right. I’ve got this.” The construction of the Starhusk, the otherworld repatriation circle; the building of the Star Memory, a library containing the memories of all the humans in this world; the establishment of the Dragon Gate, which allowed teleportation all over the continent. Ran Gadou, who had the Pure Concept of Vessel, was a key figure in creating all of these and most other technologies of the ancient civilization. “Help Sahara deal with Michele until we get back, please.” “Sure, just leave it to your big sis! …It’s okay if we happen to win, right?” “Of course.” Maya’s shadow encroached on the surface of the monolith, creating an entrance. Menou and Maya stepped into the true heart of the Mechanical Society. Drawn deep inside the monolith, they quickly vanished. “Hmm… I guess Nono Hoshizaki’s prediction was right, huh?” Abbie muttered as she watched them disappear. “But now all the conditions have been met.” It was no exaggeration to say that, from where Menou and Maya had just entered, it would be impossible to meddle with the space Abbie and the others occupied. The depth of the space was so different that it warped time itself. In fact, only the holder of the Pure Concept of Vessel could move freely within, and the pair had just entered of their own free will. This meant that Maya—and the Pure Concept of Evil—could no longer interfere with Abbie and the rest of the conjured soldiers. A blue wolf ventured onto the rooftop. It was Ginoum, Abbie’s beloved younger brother. “Big sis…are we really doing this?” “Yes, really. I feel bad for li’l Menou, but…it’s about time for us to destroy this world.” And for that, they needed a sacrifice. Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Ability Control—Invoke [Imitation ‘Mechanical Society’] Abbie’s terminal began to break, starting from the fingertips. The fine fragments of her body turned into tricolored thread, slowly weaving a cocoon with a gentle swishing noise. It would take several days for this conjuring to take effect. In the meantime, Abbie wouldn’t be able to move. Most of all, it came at a heavy cost, but she still didn’t hesitate. “We need to let these poor humans forget about the Mechanical Society.”
Chapter 141
13 min read