Round and round.
Touma Kamijou’s right arm whirled through the air, blood streaming in its wake. The thin red trail stopped in a ring, creating a bizarre work of art.
Fiamma of the Right casually held out a hand.
Then, as if sucked in, Kamijou’s right arm fell into its grasp.
The Imagine Breaker.
The singular right hand, able to erase any and all strange forces, which neither science nor sorcery could explain.
“I have it…”
Fiamma’s lips twisted in pleasure.
Pop.
With the sound of a water balloon breaking, the severed right hand exploded into pieces, cleanly dismantling and flaying the blood, flesh, bone, vessels, and nerves inside.
“The Star of Bethlehem has prepared the planetary environment. And I’ve severed the right hand as well, which must serve as the medium. I can’t bring out one hundred percent of the power resting within me without channeling through your right hand, after all. The Imagine Breaker, dispeller of illusions, must have been a sort of purifying function that the sacred right hand naturally possessed, but for me, it’s no more than a rat in a pantry, eating away at my reserves. Still, even that unnecessary role is ended now that it has accepted my power as an intrinsic piece…And thus, my right hand is complete.
“Now, if I wield that strength, which should always have been rightfully mine in the first place, to full power, the perfect salvation will be complete. Power enough to save the entire world would have been in my arm to begin with. People may call that kamijou or being above God or what have you…but that doesn’t matter to me. I’ve no intent to join His ranks, nor exceed Him. As long as I can gather the power here now and save the world, I will succeed.”
Everything was slowly being absorbed by Fiamma of the Right’s third arm, which extended from his right shoulder.
There was agony.
Though he never normally lost his cool, his eyebrow very, very slightly twitched in displeasure.
The internalized flesh and blood were perfect, but the Imagine Breaker’s power was beginning to whittle away at the source of what made Fiamma of the Right so special.
However, the fact that he didn’t immediately lose his strength was noteworthy.
In other words, the power sleeping inside Fiamma was constantly creating such immense power that the Imagine Breaker’s effects alone couldn’t annihilate it.
…This wasn’t something I could do anything about using cheap tricks, but luck and ability seem to have sided with me. Of course, without at least this much output, I couldn’t call it power worthy of being wielded by the Son of God.
Whmm. Fiamma of the Right’s body wavered.
Not only his heart. His entire body contracted, a pressure building around the third arm. It was probably a reaction to the power within his core drastically moving the third arm, which had acquired true flesh and blood.
As evidence, a huge change occurred, as if to prove the advent of a power that could alter the world.
Not to Fiamma’s body.
To the very planet that received him.
✦ ✦ ✦
The skies opened wide.
✦ ✦ ✦
Red, blue, yellow, green. Clearly not of this world, the dark of the night sky placed there by man tore open. Giant fissures appeared from many directions, like old stockings ripping, spreading without a sound.
From beyond it appeared a golden light.
It was the definition of myth. A scene out of religious paintings. The sight of the curtain of raining rays seemed to link heaven and earth. If anyone who didn’t fully know the circumstances had seen this, they would have instantly thought angels were about to descend from the clouds. In truth, God and angels didn’t exist on a physical level, but in an invisible phase, like infrared or ultraviolet rays…but its true quality was, perhaps, similar. After all, that golden light was really a massive amount of telesma.
Fiamma hadn’t summoned an angel or anything like that. Perhaps it was more accurate to say he was calling forth the world in which angels resided.
Fiamma of the Right hadn’t knocked on the proverbial doors of that world many times in bitterness, waiting for the heavy doors to open. No; the very place in which he stood was simply going through a transformation into something that would be more suitable for him.
Just as a certain Crossist saint had changed a brothel into a shining preaching pulpit when she was forcibly brought there so she could be harassed.
Just as another holy woman, upon being thrown into a cold, filthy jail, had filled the entire space with shining angelic power, like an immaculate springtime, which had gently healed her wounds.
The heavens are dyed.
The surroundings of the righteous were always dyed in righteousness.
Upon confirming that fact, Fiamma of the Right’s lips twisted in pleasure.
Now I need only rearrange the bottom of the earth before the readjustment of all the cogs and the establishment of mechanisms to keep everything in order will be complete, and this world will begin to turn correctly once again, simply as though this is how it has always been.
Which meant he had no more use for the boy who had lost his arm.
He was nothing more than a hunk of flesh serving as an adapter for that right arm to remain in this world, so it would be best to have it make a quick withdrawal.
It will be I, and nobody else, who will save this world. And you are no longer necessary for that.
Fiamma held his third arm, whose physical form was now much clearer than before, out at the boy, who was still spilling large amounts of blood from his horrific wound.
“Consider this an honor, you lump of flesh. I have safely reaped your life’s worth.”
And that would end things.
This was not the half-finished third arm that had been fluctuating awkwardly.
Nor was this destruction brought on by the amount of knowledge in the 103,000 grimoires.
This—this was the power that would save the world.
The power central to one legend.
That which was called kamijou. To stand above God.
This explosion of light, massive enough to reduce a planet to dust if necessary, would change the superfluous adapter into so many little pieces without question.