Having watched the mock battle from afar, Reiji now walked up to the group.
“Mary-chan, you’re awfully strong, huh?” he said.
“Sure am,” she replied. “I’m a genius, after all. Ehem!”
“Hahaha. I see. That’s amazing...” Reiji said, his smile somewhat gloomy.
“Right? Right? Feel free to keep praising me,” Hydemary said. She was still the same as she always was.
With the mock battle over, Suimei’s party returned to the briefing room to go over the current situation.
“So? The demons seriously popped up outta nowhere?” Suimei asked.
“Mm-hmm. Completely out of the blue,” Reiji confirmed.
“It was total chaos getting ready for them,” Mizuki added.
“Were you okay out there?” Suimei asked Mizuki.
“Me? I just kinda tagged along,” she answered.
Mizuki was claiming she’d simply gone with the flow, but judging by how tired she looked, she must’ve fought properly too. It was clear to Suimei that she was just putting on a strong front.
“Appeared out of the blue, huh...?” Suimei muttered.
“I know it sounds impossible,” Titania said.
“Not really,” Suimei remarked. “It’s entirely doable.”
“Suimei, so you think it’s...?” Reiji started to ask.
“Aah, I guess I told you about him before,” Suimei confirmed. “There’s a guy on their side who can do it.”
“Umm, what was his name again?” Reiji said. “I’m pretty sure he called himself Lishbaum, but the guy you know has a different name, right?”
“Yeah, Kudrack,” Suimei said.
“Hang on, Suimei-kun,” Hydemary cut in, her voice suddenly grave. “Are you serious?”
“Yup. Dead serious,” he told her.
“You’re kidding me. That devil is still alive?” Hydemary said. “He was on the verge of death from the mayor’s blood magicka and got blown away beyond dimensional space by your divine magicka, right?”
“Yeah, but for some reason, he’s alive,” Suimei said. “What could he have done to pull that off? Good luck alone couldn’t make that happen...”
“Hmmm. Even my head’s starting to hurt...” Hydemary started massaging her forehead with the tip of her wand.
“He’s even grown some gaudy horns,” Suimei added.
“Seriously? Isn’t he definitely stronger than that shady-sounding Demon Lord?” Hydemary asked. “How many times are we gonna have to kill him this time?”
“Who knows...? He must have already put countermeasures in place. It’s possible he’s even linked to divinity...”
“Can you not bring up such apocalyptic possibilities?” Hydemary complained. “You’ll make them true.”
“Ugh... I guess my dad never dared to say stuff like that...” Suimei conceded.
“He really understood these kinda things,” Hydemary agreed. “It had to be from experience.”
“Maybe so,” Suimei said, then got the conversation back on track. “Well, let’s cut the chitchat there. What’s the situation?”
“The demons have withdrawn for now,” Elliot explained. “They might be reforming their ranks.”
“It’s awfully weird of them,” Reiji remarked.
“They must be plotting something,” Elliot agreed. “But so long as we have no idea what that is, we can’t respond haphazardly.”
“What do we do? Should we just launch an attack of our own?” Reiji suggested.
“I don’t think meeting them in the field is a great idea,” Elliot said. “We should do our best to preserve our strength until reinforcements arrive.”
“And how long will that take?” Reiji asked.
“If the demons don’t obstruct them, it’ll take three days at most,” Titania said.
“How likely is it that the demons attack before then?” Reiji asked.
“I would say it’s pretty much guaranteed,” Titania answered.
If the demons were intent on taking down the city, there was no doubting it.
“What’s your opinion, Lefi?” Suimei said.
“I don’t have any objections to the overall plan,” Lefille said. “However, if they retreated while maintaining the upper hand, we should assume they’re scheming something. Luring the enemy into a false sense of security and rounding them up all at once is a common strategy.”
“How can this be done, specifically?” Titania asked.
“One example would be to have several units disguise themselves to sneak into the city and launch an attack from within right as the battle begins,” Lefille explained.
“I took a look around, but didn’t see anything of the sort,” Reiji said. “It’s a different story if they’re disguised, though.”
If the demons were capable of disguising themselves as humans, it would be difficult to tell at a glance. Nobody could deny that was a possibility.
“I see. Then let’s start by uncovering them and cleaning the place up,” Suimei suggested. “Now’s about the only time we can.”
“How?” Reiji asked.
“With magicka, of course,” Suimei answered.
“How convenient,” Mizuki remarked, admiring. “It’s like magicka can solve anything.”
“That’s what it’s for,” Suimei agreed. “But there’s a lot that it can’t do, so you’ve gotta spend a ton of time thinking of ways to get it to work sometimes...” Suimei paused there and sighed. “Okay, let’s figure out what’s going on inside the city. Time to get an eye in the sky.”
With that, they left the castle, setting out to clean up any demons within the city walls.
Once outside the castle, Suimei drew a magic circle on the stone pavement. He used a dark red chalk that he’d firmly stowed away within a bundle of paper. Despite doing everything by eye, he drew a nearly perfect circle with clean lines, to the astonishment of those around him. When he finished, he started humming a chant.
“Blackened wings beat high above. Crows, O crows. Be born by my words. Scatter and fall. Born of chaos, let your red eyes become mine. Cry. Assemble. Heed my curse. Above the twilight, sitting atop power lines, above all sight, the crows fall in line to look down upon you.”
Suimei hunched over and rubbed his hands together as if trying to warm himself up in the winter winds. This was ancient magicka that directly manipulated a curse—a xenoglossia spell.
Shortly after, a black, tar-like liquid oozed from the gaps in his fingers. It dripped to the ground, stinking like oil, and formed a slick black puddle beneath him. A small red glimmer appeared within it before the cursed mud started swelling upward. Much like a ball of clay sitting on a potter’s wheel, it started to take shape—creating a murder of crows. This was similar to the crow Liliana had once created, but done on a far larger scale.
“Ugh. Yup, that’s magicka,” Hatsumi said, reeling back as if she was watching something filthy.
“Wow! It’s so creepy! This is great!” Mizuki exclaimed, her eyes sparkling in a completely opposite reaction.
“Um, Anou-san?” Hatsumi said, somewhat bewildered and put off by her reaction. “You do mean... that, right?”
“This kinda creepy and weird stuff is the true charm of the occult, right?” Mizuki said.
“Isn’t it better when magicka is, like... cooler?” Hatsumi remarked. “Or even cuter, like what Mary-chan did?”
“There’s that too! But that’s not the point!”
Mizuki was trying to emphasize the greatness of occultic creepiness, but Hatsumi didn’t get it at all. She may as well have had a bunch of question marks floating over her head. Meanwhile, Liliana looked at Suimei’s magicka and puffed out her cheeks.
“Mrgh... Show-off,” she said. “Is this out of spite?”
“You’ve been awfully pouty lately,” Suimei told her. “Is it what I think it is? Are you in your rebellious phase?”
“I’m not!”
Liliana was pouting even more now. Despite this, she and Felmenia stared at the magicka and analyzed it, mumbling to each other about “So for this part of it...” “It’s a matter of capacity...” and stuff like that. One way or another, those who aspired to learn magicka never quite stopped studying.
Before long, the murder of crows took to the skies as one. Lefille looked up at them, then asked the question that was on everyone’s minds.