After Amane had collapsed, the referee had knelt next to him to check on his condition. The boy had lost a lot of blood and was in critical condition, so the referee had decided to use healing magic to patch him up a bit while the medical team made their way over.
“Huh?”
But as he held his hand over Amane to heal him, their gazes met. Amane’s eyes were still open, and there was a turgid darkness lurking within them.
“Outta the way,” Amane said, and glowing black tendrils of highly condensed mana erupted out of him. They looked like black flames as they writhed around, slowly coalescing into the shape of numerous arms that reached out to choke the referee.
“Whoa!”
“Watch out!”
Ikki was the first to react. He quickly tackled the stunned referee out of the way.
“Wh-Wh-Wh-What’s going on?! Shinomiya was down, but now he’s summoned a bunch of creepy-looking black arms and attacked the referee!” Iida shouted, stunned.
“N-No way! Just what is that power?!” Saikyou cried as she stood up from her chair. Unlike Iida, she was shocked not by Amane having attacked the referee, but rather by the nature of the black arms he had summoned.
The floor’s crumbling?!
Ikki stared in shock as the parts of the stone floor the arms had hit started crumbling away, as if centuries of erosion and rot had afflicted the stone all at once. The rot started slowly spreading as well, taking the surrounding stone with it.
I think I know what’s going on...
“Amane-kun...”
Ikki turned back to Amane. The boy had managed to stagger back to his feet, though he was deathly pale from all the blood loss.
“Don’t screw with me... I can’t lose... Nameless Glory is supposed to be invincible... There’s nothing it can’t do... There’s no wish it can’t grant... That’s how it’s always been. That’s why I was able to finally give up on myself! You can’t tell me it’s fallible now, after I’ve already lost my home, my family, my friends, and even myself! Like hell I’ll accept that!”
His eyes were bloodshot, and tears were spilling out of them.
“I refuse to accept it...” he muttered in an anguished voice.
He couldn’t accept that someone like Ikki, of all people, had beaten him. From the moment he’d learned of Kurogane Ikki’s existence, he’d hated him. A Rank F failure who’d been born to a famous Blazer family. Normally, someone like him would have accepted his lot in life and given up on becoming a Mage-Knight. And yet, he’d refused to give up, eventually earning himself far more fame than any other Rank F Blazer in history.
Watching him almost made Amane have hope again, and that’s what he hated. It made him think maybe he shouldn’t have given up on himself after all. That maybe, if he’d tried as hard as Ikki had, his life might have gone differently. But in his eyes, that hope was nothing more than a curse, since it only made him hate himself more.
What a joke! It was only after I lost my friends, my parents, and everyone else in my life that I finally worked up the courage to give up. Stop showing me impossible dreams when I’ve suffered so much already!
“You’re an eyesore...”
“You—”
“Kurogane, get back! We’ll take care of this!” Shinguuji Kurono shouted, interrupting Ikki. She summoned her Device and leaped up onto the fence dividing the crowd from the ring. “Everyone, work together to hold him down!”
She started shouting out orders to the other Blazers who were guarding the crowd. They moved as one, surrounding Amane from all sides.
“Don’t get in my waaaaay!” Amane screamed, summoning hundreds of black arms and shooting them into the stands.
“Everybody deploy a mana barrier!” Saikyou instructed through the microphone. “Don’t let those flaming black arms touch anyone!”
“Ngh!”
The Blazers serving security detail for the Seven Stars Battle Festival were all elite veterans, and they immediately carried out Saikyou’s order, projecting their mana outward to form a barrier around the stands. The hands struggled against it, their nails scraping across the invisible surface like they were trying to scratch through glass. Thanks to the Blazers’ speedy response, no one was hurt, but some people in the crowd still screamed in surprise.
“Waaah?!”
“Eeeek!”
“Wh-What the hell?!”
Though the hands didn’t reach anyone, some of them hit the fence, causing it to rapidly erode the same way the stone floor had. Furthermore, the rot spread just like it was doing along the stone floor, slowly encroaching on where the audience sat.
“Is the floor rotting?!” Iida shouted, panicking. “It seems anything those black arms made of Shinomiya’s mana touch rots away! B-But how is that possible?! A power that manipulates fate should only be able to make what’s theoretically possible happen! The reinforced concrete protecting the stands is made to last for hundreds of years! It shouldn’t be possible for it to rot unless some other form of Blazer power is at work!”
“He changed how he’s using his power.”
“What do you mean, Saikyou-sensei?!”
“Until now, Ama-chan wasn’t bothering to control his power. He was just passively dispersing it all around him. It’s strong enough that he didn’t need to do any more than that to get what he wanted. But those black arms are different. He’s concentrated the power of Nameless Glory so much that it’s become visible. However, that means it’s also far stronger!”
Saikyou was exactly right. Amane had concentrated his fate-bending powers into just the black arms he’d summoned, exponentially increasing their power to achieve whatever it was he desired. As a result, there was no longer a process that required the result to be theoretically possible; all that mattered was that the result was in line with Amane’s desires. And right now, all Amane desired was death.
“Those arms will bring death to whatever they touch, regardless of what unrealistic process they have to go through to make that happen! Don’t let them so much as graze you! Commentator guy, I need you to organize an evacuation!”
“Wh-What are you going to do, Saikyou-sensei?!”
“I’ll hold that kid down! Kuu-chan, you guys focus on protecting the audience!”
Saikyou summoned her Device, Crimson Swallowtail, and waved it, shattering the windows of the commentator’s booth. She then enveloped herself in a veil of mana thick enough to be visible and prepared to jump out of the spectator box. But before she could, Ikki called out to her.
“There’s no need,” he said in a calm voice.
“Kuro-bou?”
“You guys focus on protecting the audience. I’ll stop him.”