Itogami City General Sorcerous Hospital was a medical agency specializing in demons directly overseen by the Gigafloat Management Corporation.
The medical wing was near the center of Itogami Island, giving it a great across-the-canal view of the Keystone Gate lobby Aradahl had destroyed with his Beast Vassal. The giant spherical fortress floating in the sky above was also highly visible.
“Hah…that bastard really put on a show.”
Gazing at the sorry sight of Keystone Gate from his patient room window with a sardonic smile on his face was Schtola D, paroled sorcerous criminal. The youth had a crude look on his face reminiscent of a street gang member.
Thanks to being wounded all over his body, his foul look didn’t seem very imposing at the moment. The night before, he’d challenged Shahryar Ren to combat, only to suffer critical, near-fatal wounds himself.
“That Necropolis is Castle Kalenaren of the Ren family. Damn it all…!”
Schtola D’s cheeks twisted as he gazed at the fortress floating in midair. The blatant foulness of his tongue was just as rumored, but it didn’t feel all that scary since he came off as a pouting child.
“Necropolis?”
Asagi parroted back the unfamiliar term. She’d come to visit Schtola D, a fellow Deva, to wring out information on Ladli Ren.
“…The castles where Deva royalty and nobles hold court. According to legend, they’re phantom cities that wander the borders between the real world and another, I think? The Devas left on the surface during The Great Cleansing dream for eternity inside the Necropolises, biding their time until their eventual return…”
Motoki Yaze, tagging along with Asagi, explained in an overdramatic tone, but…
“Ain’t nothin’ as high an’ mighty as that. They’re just monster mansions of useless geezers who won’t hurry up and die already…”
“Keh,” spat out Schtola D as he spoke.
By rights, he was a fiendish criminal who should’ve been shut inside the Prison Barrier, but contrary to expectations, he’d been cooperative with Asagi and Yaze. He probably was desperate for any visitor he could talk to. He was bound to his bed, unable to move a muscle, and the other occupant of the room, Bruté Dumblegraff, was a man of exceedingly few words, apparently leaving Schtola D bored stiff.
“Geezers…aren’t those your buddies?”
Asagi asked with a suspicious tone. Schtola D and the Ren siblings were both self-declared Devas. Asagi and Yaze didn’t know how to distinguish between them.
For his part, Schtola D’s face suddenly went red with indignation.
“Haah? Who’s whose buddy, you stupid jerk! I’ll kill ya, Priestess of Cain or not… damnit, that hurts! These wounds hurt!”
“Gravely wounded patients shouldn’t get all excited, then…!”
Asagi turned a pitying look toward Schtola D as he trashed around on the bed.
“Oh, shaddap, shit-jerk. Look, after the piece-of-shit Great Cleansing, proud Devas, you know, like me, cut off all ties with the human world and created a highly developed spiritual civilization on an isolated plateau in South America, unlike you monkeys! And that was thousands of years ago!”
“Highly developed spiritual civilization…?”
“You got a problem with that, haaah?!”
The dubious expression coming over Asagi’s face made Schtola D angrily shout with teary eyes.
“Well, fine. And?”
Asagi bluntly prodded him to continue. Schtola D’s fists trembled from obvious irritation.
“The crappy folks left in the Necropolises are like livin’ corpses that ain’t taken a step forward in thousands of years. They think the whole unaging and undying bit is grand and stay locked up in their flyin’ tombs, obsessed with their pathetic authority and tryin’ to retake their past glory. So don’t you dare lump me together with those shitheads beyond saving, you idiot!”
“Well, now I know the gist of it…”
“Ahhh, that so?”
Worn out by his own anger, Schtola D slumped back against his bed, closing his eyes and taking several moments to put his breathing in order.
“…So you wanna know the Necropolises’ weaknesses?”
“Eh?”
“Didn’t ya come all this way to talk to me to get me to tell ya? Hey, if you don’t wanna hear it, that’s fine with me.”
“Wait, Schtola D, tell me about it. Ahhh, right, want to eat some jelly?”
Asagi picked up a cup of jelly sitting on top of the table, dangling it in front of the young Deva. For a moment, Schtola D looked back at Asagi in abject shock.
“No, I don’t! An’ that’s my leftover hospital food, ain’t it?!”
“You don’t need it? I can have it, then?”
“What, you’re gonna eat it?!”
“I like this brand of jelly. They served it a lot at the cafeteria in primary school way back…”
Asagi cheerfully explained as she began digging into the jelly. Schtola D gazed at her with an exasperated look for a time, finally sighing with an offhanded air.
“First, it goes like this. Physical attacks don’t work against a Necropolis. It’s like Spiky-Face said earlier, even if a Necropolis appears in the real world, half its existence is still in another one. No matter how showy the attacks you pound into it from this side, it ain’t gonna do damage through the otherworld wall in the way.”
“I see…so it’s constructed like a vat made with a vacuum insulation spell…”
“I got no idea what the hell that is.”
Whether appropriate or not, Asagi’s example was so difficult to understand that it left Schtola D replying with annoyance.
“If attacks don’t pass through from the outside, would attacks from within work?”
Yaze inquired in a sober tone.
Among the Beast Vassals serving Kojou Akatsuki was a twin-headed dragon, a Dimension Eater that could inflict damage regardless of dimensional walls. The effects on surrounding space would be too great to let it chew its way through an entire Necropolis, but it might be viable if they could open no more than a breach to invade the Necropolis’s innards.