St. George’s Cathedral.
Stiyl Magnus was running through its basement. Not through a room somewhere—through a long passage made of stone. St. George’s Cathedral had escape routes that went on for miles, centered on the building, like a spiderweb. Real ones, fake ones, trapped ones, detours for getting surrounded in the passages, and so on—their uses and importance were many and varied.
Footsteps were approaching from behind.
Strange footsteps. The number of them didn’t match the distance.
I can’t afford to keep running forever.
Stiyl ground his teeth.
If I give her calculation abilities any room to breathe, that by itself gives Fiamma an easy way to use her!!
A moment later.
“Chapter fifteen, verse four. Cutting off hostile’s escape route and commencing certain disposition.”
Wh-whmm!! The entire space around them shook.
By the time he’d noticed it, the underground passage in front of Stiyl collapsed as though crushed by the hand of a giant.
Stiyl whipped back around.
Two eyes, shining, deep in the darkness.
Three more white lights hovered near Index as well.
“Chapter seventeen, verse thirty-three. Confirmed distinctive Norse mythology features from hostile. Replicating the sword of the god of fertility as a countermeasure. Immediately executing.”
Vwoom!! The three white lights shot forth.
“Gah!!”
Stiyl produced a sword of flames right away, but the three lights suddenly switched from their straight-line trajectories to moving like slippery, living creatures, worming their way around Stiyl’s sword of flames.
Freyr’s sword…?!
Weapons that freely danced in the air and ended enemies’ lives without fail appeared often in many myths around the world, not just Norse mythology. The sword of Freyr, god of fertility, was a perfect example. The legend went that if someone wise possessed it, it would fight on its own, bringing absolute victory to its owner.
In ancient Norse religion, both gods and humans could possibly be defeated or die. Nevertheless, in all the legends, not one had ever depicted Freyr’s sword losing.
It was that level of myth.
That level of destructive power.
They went through the gaps in his defense—his sword of flames—and Stiyl, with the swords’ tips now pointed at his throat, shouted:
“Innocentius!!”
He no longer cared about the damage to himself.
A fiery titan appeared a moment later, parrying the three floating swords even as the burst of hot wind blew Stiyl, its user, directly backward.
His back collided with the collapsed wall blocking the passage.
A tiny bit of spare time.
But that wouldn’t be enough to turn it around.
“Chapter twenty, verse nine. Distorted Crossist motif confirmed. Beginning construction of optimal spell for use against the aforementioned spell. Activation preparations complete for spell name Eli Eli Lema Sabachthani. Executing at once.”
A giant magic circle appeared in midair, centered on Index’s face, and from it fired dark-red rays of light.
They easily tore Innocentius apart, dispersed it, shot right past Stiyl, and gouged a huge hole in the mountain of debris.
“…I see,” said Stiyl, putting a hand on the wall and barely managing to stand up on his own two feet. “I’m up against the 103,000 grimoires. It only makes sense a mere single Innocentius couldn’t compete with it.
“However,” he added.
✦ ✦ ✦
“I never said I only had one trump card.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Boom!! came an explosion.
Next to Stiyl was a fiery titan.
But not just on one side of him.
One Innocentius now reigned at both his right and left.
“Double.”
For a short time, Index closely observed the phenomenon.
Eventually, eyes still emotionless, she spoke.
“Chapter twenty-one, verse forty-four. Commencing construction of countermeasure against multiple targets. Executing—”
And then it happened.
“Triple.”
Boom!! Another burst went off.
Index’s words stopped abruptly. It seemed to be considering whether the command she was about to execute would obstruct her.
Stiyl knew he had expended a large amount of mana—and thus the life force it was created from. But even as the greasy sweat broke out, he grinned.
“You didn’t think…that I’d leave my abilities to rot after feeling so powerless back then, did you?”
Of course, Stiyl couldn’t always use three Innocentiuses with his power alone. No matter how new the spell designs, there was a line that you couldn’t cross on just your own strength. And Stiyl hadn’t yet overcome that wall.
Instead, he made up for what he lacked with the Soul Arms in St. George’s Cathedral.
He’d been running away this entire time so he could find the items he needed, retrieve them, and use them.
But the library of grimoires didn’t stop.
She continued her purely methodical analysis.
“Chapter twenty-three, verse eleven. Confirmed three-in-one structure. Identified target spell as serving a single role as three, aiming to conserve mana expenditure by circulating mana between three bodies.”
Voom!! Served by her three swords of the fertility god around her, backed by her protruding bloodred wings, and eyes glittering with the eerie light of magic circles within them, Index said:
“There is but one countermeasure. Concluding that a focused attack on one of the three will cause the three-in-one structure to collapse.”