“Urgh!”
“I don’t care if you look down on me! You can treat me like an idiot. But at least listen to me. You’re strong, so you can at least do that, can’t you?!”
Mismis brought her fist up again.
“Nor—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me?!”
Shanorotte’s left fist made contact with Mismis’s forehead.
Mismis was thrown back, but she didn’t go down. Just before she fell over onto her back, she grabbed the wall with her hand and kept herself upright.
“You’re the one who’s getting on my nerves…”
Shanorotte couldn’t even wipe the sweat dripping off her as she let out a big breath of air.
“It’s always been like that. I was just a little nice to you, and you started following me like a puppy! It’s so stupid. You didn’t even know I was tricking you!”
“What’s so bad about it if I didn’t know?!”
“Guh.”
“Since I don’t have it in me to hate you even though I know now!”
“I’m saying that’s what makes you stupid!”
Shanorotte brought her fist up.
Mismis did at the same time. They both punched each other in the forehead, shrieked, and retreated back.
They were also both out of breath.
Shanorotte was at her limit, and the pain from her gunshot wounds was still throbbing.
“Imperials and citizens of the Sovereignty will never get along! And what are you, anyway?! You want to try being friends with me? Don’t you have any other friends?!”
“I do!”
“Then just leave me alone!”
Shanorotte couldn’t stand on her injured thigh.
Even forming a fist took everything she had. She felt dizzy from the blood loss and horribly cold.
But still…
“I’d never lose to somebody like you! You’re so weak that your punches don’t even hurt. You runt!”
“Well, your punches hurt, Noro!”
“Wha?!”
“It’s true… You’re amazing…Noro…”
Without putting her fists down, Mismis stood close enough to Shanorotte to punch her at any moment, but she only smiled weakly.
“How can you stay standing when you’re hurt so bad? ……I couldn’t do that. I don’t think I could win…”
“…”
“You’re bigger than me, and put in more effort and you’re more skilled, and sensitive and smarter—”
“…………”
“So isn’t that enough? You could at least listen to me, you blockhead!”
“……Guh?!”
Mismis punched her again.
“You… That was dirty! You can’t punch me while I’m listening to you!”
She punched Mismis back.
Mismis staggered and gritted her teeth, then brought her fist up.
They punched each other over and over, screaming and yelling at each other over and over again.
They just kept going, never stopping, over and over.
It seemed foolish.
Why was she going along with something so foolish? Why was she taking it so seriously?
Especially with the Lord right there. Even though her sworn enemy was standing right there, why was she fighting and punching her former colleague until she was out of strength?
“…”
Eventually, she reached her limit.
“You’re so stupid…”
“Noro?”
“I’m so stupid for going along with an idiot…”
She exhaled all the air left in her lungs and pushed back her bangs that stuck to her skin from her sweat.
✦ ✦ ✦
Then Shanorotte fell onto the ground, her limbs splayed out around her.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ahh… I lost to Mis.”
She couldn’t even lift a finger.
She had genuinely used up all her strength.
“I lost. I’ll do what you say since you won.”
“Noro…”
Shanorotte looked up at Mismis, whose mouth hung open.
Then she closed her eyes.
“You really are an idiot, Mis. You worry about a traitor like me… You’re such a pushover… A real pushover—”
That was probably why people gravitated toward her.
That was why she had such amazing subordinates and why a Saint Disciple like Risya stuck around.
Just as the arrival of spring brought all sorts of life with it, Mismis drew people to her.
“People just can’t help gathering… You’re like the spring breeze, Mis.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“The sun illuminates all.”
The horizon turned red.
The freezing night took on the color of crimson, heralding the sun that would illuminate the world. It was dawn, a time bordering night and day.
“Behold, Alice and Kissing!” Talisman joyfully declared, his white coat fluttering around him. “A new age of knowledge is soon to come!”
“Ice!”
His voice was closing in on her. His very presence seemed to be pursuing her.
The strange pressure made Alice break into a sweat as she thrust out her right hand before her.
“Wall— Ah?!”
It shattered.
Right before her very eyes, the ice wall created by her astral power blasted away without a single trace.
With a single blow of the man’s fist.
Even the Imperial forces’ machine guns and tanks hadn’t been able to destroy her wall.
“Impossible…!”
“There is nothing to fear, my dear Alice.”
Beyond the shattered ice, she saw his enlarged, shudder-inducing eye and smile. She almost felt like vomiting from fright.
“This is the form our new knowledge will take.”
His arms swelled until they were the size of logs.
The white suit he had so elegantly worn swelled and, unable to contain his monstrous form, split with a piercing sound.
Not only that, but she saw glowing, blackish-red crystals protruding from the breast of his suit.
They pulsated almost like a heart, but the crystals couldn’t have possibly been anything human. Was this really the head of the Hydra who had once been so radiant?
“Lord Talisman! Is this…what you wanted?!”
“Hmm. What a strange thing to ask, Alice.”
His neck twisted to a grotesque degree as the man that was once Talisman smiled joyfully.
“It does not matter whether I sought it or not. This is the planet’s will.”
“Wall—crush!”
The lawn froze and turned white.
Tendrils of ice formed below Talisman’s feet, twisting around his legs to bind him. Two ice walls approached him from the right and left in an attempt to squash him.
“Now!” he roared in delight.
Alice hadn’t been able to see it. Talisman’s eyes seemed to disappear…then the next moment, her three-meter-tall walls shattered.
Had he broken them with just a punch?
That shouldn’t be possible. He had cleaved through the walls, which were tougher than steel, as though they were pudding.
……Do I use my ice-flower shield?
……No, I don’t have enough time to create it.
She wouldn’t make it in time. She couldn’t stop him.
“Alice, I am beckoning you into a new world.”
“Turn into stars.”
Thousands, then tens of thousands of thorns appeared in the night sky.
Behind Alice, Kissing raised both her arms and launched countless thorns from above her head.
They were like meteors.
The terribly dense rain of astral power thorns erased everything they came into contact with. The lawn, the metal container, and even the large truck seemed to melt out of existence.
“How elegant, Kissing.”
“……What?!”
“A waning moon is the most beautiful. Without Lord Mask, the House of Zoa is far from a full moon. But you still glitter in the sky as a crescent. And…ah, what intense, offensive astral power you have!”
As the thorns fell like a meteor shower, Talisman began to run at a terrifying speed, his coat fluttering behind him. He spared none of the thorns a backward glance as he dodged all of them.
Kissing couldn’t hit him.
“So these are your thorns. Anything that the thorns touch disappears… I see, how fitting for someone who fears contact with others. It’s quite pitiful.”
“…Huh?!” Kissing swallowed her breath.
She had realized that Talisman was unscathed. Not a single thorn pierced his white suit, sending a shiver down her spine.
He was toying with them.
“Monster!”
“Monster? Ah, yes, humans only have two designations for things which they do not understand. You are either a monster or a genius. I much prefer the latter.”
Talisman stood before Kissing.
He raised his trunk-like arms, balling his hands into fists.
“Allow me to teach you a lesson. I have reached the pinnacle of knowledge!”
“Ah…ah…”
She couldn’t move.
Because the monster had looked down on her gleefully right before her eyes, she had seen him for what he truly was.
Talisman’s entire body erupted with the dark power of the calamity that had infested him.
“Sorcerer……”
Her whole life, Kissing had only ever felt fear from the bottom of her heart when she faced Elletear, the true witch.
And now she had found it again, another monster created by the power of the calamity. Not only that, but he was a powerful, war-crazed man. Even Alice’s ice hadn’t been able to freeze him, and not a single one of Kissing’s thorns had been able to touch him.
This was Talisman, the true sorcerer.
“No, Kissing, run!”
“This is my—”
At the same time Alice screamed, delight came over the sorcerer. And…