Lapis Lazuline the Third
Asmona was strong. Lazuline had yet to get through the hallway. In the Caspar Faction mansion, in the hallway that led to Frederica’s room, the two magical girls were continuing to swing at each other.
Lazuline avoided one punch and fired off a series of small, continuous strikes—her arm almost got caught in the enemy’s sticky defense, so she pulled it back. Then she hit her opponent with the heel of her palm and backed up several steps. When her opponent followed, Lazuline kneed her, spun them both around, and parried with a shin. Three blows, then five; Lazuline reached all the way out with her fingertips for a strike that skimmed the other girl’s glasses.
Lazuline backed up, and the enemy—the Great Adulteress Asmona—readjusted her glasses. Lazuline loosened up her shoulders, taking slow, long breaths to prepare herself.
This corner of the grand estate was now a ruin. The roof had fallen, the walls were crumbled, the rugs were in tatters, the chandeliers were in pieces, and the valuable-looking paintings and Western antiques had become basically garbage. Even after this much destruction, Asmona still bore not even a scratch. Even though Lapis Lazuline’s magic meant not just a wound but a complete end to the fight, she was struggling to manage even that.
Asmona was as strong as expected. The title of one of the Seven Great Devils of the Archfiend Cram School was not just for show. If there were another six at her level, then no wonder the school had acted so arrogantly back when Pam was alive. But while Lazuline acknowledged the strength of her opponent, she didn’t plan to lose.
She pulled a single candy out from a hidden pocket at her elbow, bringing it to her cuff and from her cuff to her palm, keeping it from the enemy’s sight. Lazuline could make emotions, memories, and magic effects into candies. While Asmona was fighting, she had been continuously emitting candies from her own body in order to keep from being negatively affected by the mushroom magic. It wasn’t only negative effects that could be made into candies and removed—magics that gave positive effects could, too.
Without any warning, Lazuline jumped. She couldn’t let this opportunity go to waste. Her back to the enemy, she curled into a ball so that they didn’t see her eating a candy she’d pulled out. The sweetness melted in her mouth.
Lazuline had forgotten the name of the magical girl she had fought before, but she was an opponent who used magic that strengthened her body. Lazuline had made that magic effect into a candy and kept it hidden on her person. The two of them had been striking each other with full power, and now Lazuline was going to come at her even stronger and faster. Could Asmona dodge that?
Lazuline struck. This was her fastest, her strongest. The spear-hand made it through Asmona’s guard and skimmed her cheek. Lazuline’s magic worked. A memory candy popped out from Asmona’s face.
Asmona staggered. The light was lost from her eyes. It had knocked her unconscious.
Lazuline stepped forward to finish her off. While firing a follow-up attack, she felt something was off. Something was strange. She sensed a presence—though she could have sworn she’d knocked Asmona out.
Asmona’s polka-dot newsboy hat lifted slightly. Something long and red like a frog’s tongue flew out from the gap between her hat and her head, grabbing the candy that had just appeared in front of Lazuline and thrusting it into Asmona’s mouth.
Oh no…!
Lazuline had been completely focused on attacking, throwing everything into that strike without even defending herself. She hadn’t been prepared for a counter at all. If her master had been here, she definitely would have scolded her for it. The enemy had an opening, but Lazuline was also full of openings, even when they were at a lover’s distance, close enough they could feel each other’s breaths.
Before Asmona’s eyes could regain their light, Lazuline moved. For all she knew, her opponent might have felt the same, thinking she had moved first.
At point-blank range, she fired an elbow, a knee, a palm, and then her back, striking and being struck so continuously it was as if their previous exchange was a lie. With every strike, Lazuline tried to draw out a candy, Asmona just never let her touch skin directly, and all Lazuline could do was punch or kick her over cloth. Though they became tangled up, Lazuline somehow pulled away. Asmona spat blood, trying to get it in Lazuline’s eyes, which Lazuline wiped away.
Her skull was fractured, and her ribs were damaged far beyond some tiny little cracks.
Asmona’s glasses were cracked. Even with the same cracks, there was a big difference there, but she didn’t get off with just that. Her right arm was hanging loosely because her shoulder had been shattered. Her right cheek was swollen, and her right eye was red, and it was difficult to determine whose injuries were worse.
“The hat, huh,” Lazuline said particularly slowly as she checked both their damage.
Asmona listened to her without breathing hard. She understood, too.
“So you have another self that’s separate from your main body.”
Lazuline had withdrawn the memory candy from Asmona’s body, so Asmona should have passed out. But the hat had its own mind—had acted independently and grabbed the candy to put its master back to normal. It seemed simple, but it wasn’t so easily done. To be able to respond so immediately, Asmona was, well, a monster.
“Mine isn’t the kind of secret weapon that yours is,” Asmona said.
Lazuline thought that maybe her master could have seen through it, but she didn’t say so.
“So then, from here on out…”
Footsteps approached. They grew louder. They were coming incredibly hard. A black shadow raced through, cutting through the mushroom spores.
“Frederica…? No—that’s a body double!” said Deluge, on the runner’s back. She closed her eyes and groaned.
The one carrying her was Ripple. Her expression was pure hatred, with open fury. Was Asmona frowning because the person she was supposed to have been protecting had been using a body double, or was it at Ripple’s expression?
Lazuline’s eyes stayed fixed on the three people Ripple was carrying on her back. First, there was Deluge. She looked as if she was at her limits, but she still used her magic in the spores, and she had lasted this long. There were Catherine and Brenda, too. Their transformations were undone, and they were unconscious.
Lazuline sensed the air slacken. Her expulsion of candies decreased and then quickly stopped. Her magical ability to remove harmful magics was striking at nothing. It seemed that Asmona had undone her spore magic.
“Is the fight over?” Lazuline asked.
“My job was to protect my boss… And she used a body double without telling me, so my work is done… Although I guess that means I never had a job to begin with.”
Heedless of the odd air that lay between Asmona and Lazuline, Ripple lowered Deluge first, then handed the magical girls to Lazuline.
“Take care of them.”
There was no time to stop her. Lazuline couldn’t say she was pretty badly wounded, too. Ripple ran off, and when Lazuline looked toward Asmona, wondering what was up, she had already vanished, too. They were all so quick to act.
Bearing with the pain that racked her whole body, Lazuline slung all three of the girls over her shoulders and ran off. She would take along the magical girls who were still fighting as well as those who had fallen and couldn’t move to retreat.