Thunder-General Adelheid
She drew her lips into a line. As the smoke was slowly clearing, her gaze never left the direction where the enemy had been. She lightly clasped both hands, crossed both her arms in front of her face, and crouched down in a low stance. She transmuted all of the lightning bolts she’d taken into energy, and using that, she prepared for the next attack.
“Festung Marienberg.”
She repelled two lightning strikes in succession. If not for her Festung Marienberg, which made use of her magic purely for defense, she would never have been able to take it. The ceiling fell, the floor cracked, and the rubble lit on fire, illuminating from below the composed look on the face of the Lightning before her with the ace of spades on her thigh.
Adelheid consciously put on a self-deprecating smile for the enemy. “Hold on a sec.”
“What for?”
“I got one of yer compadres right here.” She lowered her shoulder to show her the head of the wounded person on her back.
The Lightning in front of her didn’t even spare her a glance; she didn’t seem to care.
“She’ll get hurt if ya do anything reckless. Not a good idea.”
“If you’re trying to take a hostage, then you’re vastly underestimating me.”
Lightning swung her longsword. But it wasn’t as if Adelheid had seen the slice. She just realized belatedly that she’d been attacked when she saw pillars, dirt, and sliced-up floorboards hanging in the air and saw that the Ace Lightning was suddenly holding her longsword.
This was not an opponent Adelheid would ever want to fight. She’d abandoned any joy in fighting stronger foes before turning ten. She was only going to fight enemies she could beat.
“You’re tough. And I went easy on you because I can’t just kill you.”
Invisible attacks followed. They gradually became more forceful. Adelheid continued to withstand it. Unlike Siegfried Linie, this wouldn’t transmute the stored energy to attack. She would do nothing but defend, defend, and continue to defend. This was a technique she fundamentally should not be using, unless she was counting on the enemy running out of stamina or an ally showing up very soon.
The Lightning Adelheid knew would wear herself out from splurging and firing too much lightning, but she couldn’t expect the same thing from the Lightning in front of her. If the group of Lightnings were appearing elsewhere, then even her seniors from the Archfiend Cram School would have had trouble just getting away. Not to mention her classmates—she didn’t know if they would even survive. In other words, she couldn’t expect any help, either.
The Archfiend Cram School had been the foundation of Adelheid’s life since she’d been small. There, she had been able to count on her seniors, her mother included. In the magical-girl class, it had been the others counting on her, instead. It had felt annoying and like a hassle, but she’d also been proud. I see, she’d thought. So this is what school is like.
The attacks from the Ace Lightning were gradually becoming more intense. Adelheid’s military cap flew off; her cape was shredded, and the ground swelled up and cracked. Adelheid patiently bore it.
The Ace Lightning’s expression grew cooler as if in inverse proportion to the intensity of her attacks. In the middle of attacking, she fixed her eyes on Adelheid’s and asked, “Are you trying to stall for time? I knew it.”
Adelheid hadn’t replied. Had the Ace Lightning seen through the changes in her expression? She had dashed over here in the first place by figuring out Kana, so it seemed fair to assume she was good at reading people, unlike the Lightning Adelheid knew.
“You’re defending yourself by absorbing my attacks…which means you can handle strikes, slashes, and lightning.”
Adelheid wasn’t about to respond to her opponent’s fooling. But Adelheid was probably reacting to those words in minute ways that even she wasn’t aware of. It would be better if she could close her eyes and plug her ears, but that would benefit the enemy.
“Strangling you…is one option, I suppose. But that would, like, take time. Being in close contact for that long would be a bit dicey. I don’t want to get attacked while I have my hands around your neck.”
Adelheid prayed that the Ace Lightning wouldn’t consider what it meant, so she clenched her teeth to keep her from reading her face.
“…Never mind. I might as well just incapacitate you and carry you away.”
It was no use. Any more would be bad. She couldn’t give her any information, but she was so focused on defense, she couldn’t pay attention to that.
She would bear it. That was all she would do. Her cuffs tore off, the laces of her boots were shredded, but even so, she maintained her posture and expended the energy on defense, capturing even more energy, then repeating the process.
“This isn’t even my forte—incapacitating someone and not killing them, I mean. It’s not my thing. I’m at my best when the instructions are clear-cut. Being forced to go along with your ploy to buy time is particularly stressful.”
At some point, the Ace Lightning had touched a shining gem to her forehead. That’s bad, Adelheid thought, but being committed to defense, she had no way of stopping her. But even if she hadn’t been committed to defense, it would have been impossible to stop her.
“Luxury Mode: On.”
There was a burst of dazzling lights. With it shining so bright it was difficult to keep her eyes open, Adelheid clenched her teeth. Magical girls were truly unreasonable and unfair. Could she stop her, or not? It was fairly unlikely. Evading would be even more unlikely—
“Ah…ngh!”
A smothered sound leaked out from the back of her throat. The Ace Lightning’s face was right there. She was giving Adelheid a bored look.
“Your defensive magic can’t stop bleeding, right? You’ll bleed even more if that wound gets any deeper. It’d be a big help if you just stopped fussing.”
The dagger the Ace Lightning held in her right hand was pressed against Adelheid’s windpipe. She was gradually pushing it in, making blood spurt out.
“Let’s make this an endurance contest, then. I’m not going to let you stall any further, and I’m not going to go easy on you. If you die, I’ll come up with some other plan. I’m watching you closely, so don’t even try to resist. Admit defeat as soon as you can.”
Bit by tiny bit, the blade was sinking into her flesh. Her blood continued to flow. Adelheid smiled weakly but, even so, stood there without falling. She tensed the right hand she held behind her back, clenching it. The Ace Lightning furrowed her brow in bafflement.
“What’s so funny?”
Adelheid couldn’t make a sound, so she couldn’t respond. She heard the sound of a thick artery being cut. She was bleeding. She didn’t undo her magic, and the energy continued to circulate. Her body temperature was dropping. Her pulse was slowing. But it still wasn’t certain if she’d lose. Right now, Adelheid had no choice but to cling to a very, very fine thread. That was the one way to survive—a way that she might be able to make it out alive. She clenched her right hand.
She laid her left hand on the Ace Lightning’s right hand, clasping the handle of her knife. The blade sank in even deeper. Adelheid was resisting the force pushing in with her magic, but she was hopelessly losing.
Blood spurted out. The right side of her vision was red. A burst of purple lightning. Her clenched teeth cracked. The strength was leaving her right hand.
She never undid her magic. She was still continuing the loop of defense and defense. But Adelheid’s body had reached its limit. It was already impossible for her to try to do something on her own. Her legs crumpled. She leaned on the Ace Lightning.
The Ace Lightning’s mouth opened. The corners of her mouth turned up. She was mocking Adelheid. At this point, Adelheid no longer had the energy to think about a damn thing. She didn’t have her pride as a graduate of the Archfiend Cram School, the miracles that magical girls could cause, or even the strength to clench her fists.
Adelheid’s right hand opened. The heat and strength left all at once. It was over. Her eyes met with those of the Ace Lightning, who was smiling nastily with that pretty face of hers. And then, as those eyes were watching Adelheid, from behind, a dagger thrust out to stab into one of them.
Normally, Lightning surely would have been able to evade. The enemy’s physical abilities, reflexes included, were more than monstrous—she possibly even surpassed the physically strongest magical girl that Adelheid knew of, Archfiend Pam herself. But with victory in front of her, she had relaxed her attention and had even had a smile on her face. She had come too close, thinking that so long as she had an eye on Adelheid’s movements, there was no problem. She had overlooked the thing on her back, thinking of it as a mere burden. While she excelled in physical strength and powers of judgment and insight, according to Adelheid’s estimation, she was just lacking in combat experience.
The Ace Lightning’s eyes flared. Her mouth opened wide. She was not trying to say something. The arm that came from behind Adelheid shoved forward, pushing in the dagger. Blood spurted up. Adelheid’s whole field of view was dyed red.
She remembered the night the homunculi had gone out of control. Back then as well, she had carried Princess Lightning on her back and used her ability. Lightning had skimmed energy from Adelheid’s magic, regaining her strength to bring down lightning on the homunculus.
The Ace Lightning’s hand slid from the dagger she’d thrust into Adelheid. Then it wandered around and writhed, trying to grasp at something, but it just scratched through air and touched nothing.
While it had seemed like what Adelheid had done left her no way out, defense for the sake of defense, behind that, she’d been continuously sending energy to the wounded person on her back. She felt like a nurse.
Would the whimsical princess save Adelheid? Though she’d nearly been killed by the group of Lightnings, it had been a bet. But Adelheid had had no other choice but to make that bet.
And even if Lightning wanted to help, would she be able to wake from her half-alive, half-dead state? Would she be able to strike a fatal wound in one blow without the Ace Lightning realizing it?
Adelheid had won many bets, and if she survived now it would be her complete victory—or so it should have been, but things had gotten quite questionable.
The enemy and Adelheid fell together, facing each other, tangled up as they hit the floor. She couldn’t even move her fingers anymore. Her vision had gone from red to black.
“Eh… Guess this counts…as a win…”
She couldn’t see what sort of look Lightning wore on her back. That was her biggest regret.