Simultaneously, in the Star of Bethlehem floating in the Russian skies, Sasha Kreutzev pulled an assortment of tools out of her belt. She began to draw a huge magic circle, using her L-shaped crowbar to make marks in the floor.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
The one losing her head was Lesser, who had been preparing a container to escape in.
Several metal container-like objects equipped with giant parachutes hung from the bottom of the fortress. Lesser had been going to each in turn, getting them ready to use.
Apart from the two girls, over two hundred Russian Catholic sorcerers, used and discarded by Fiamma, were present here, too. They had to let them all flee to the surface in stages before Fiamma disposed of them.
And also.
Even if it started to look like they could defeat Fiamma, it wouldn’t make a difference if they couldn’t find a way for everyone, including Lesser and Sasha, to escape.
They were still at an altitude of ten thousand meters.
“Wait! I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but the last flight is taking off soon!!”
“Answer one: I’m not here because I want to be. As an addendum, my feelings are that if we are going to leave soon, I want to do it right now.” Sasha didn’t stop working her tools as she answered. “As for my opinion—despite saying that, I do feel resistance to fleeing without doing anything. In reality, the only one fighting Fiamma is that boy. As a professional sorcerer, I must support him, even in vain.”
“But how?!”
“Answer two: Fiamma used my body to summon the POWER OF GOD and change the heaven’s condition according to his wishes…Which means I myself might be able to become a factor that drives a wedge into his plans.”
She didn’t know how far-reaching the effects would be.
At the very least, Sasha Kreutzev’s actions alone would never prove a setback to Fiamma’s grandiose plans.
But she’d do it anyway.
The light in Sasha’s eyes, hidden by her bangs, never wavered in unease.
Lesser, for her part, scratched her hair half-heartedly. “Grr!! Then I’ll make you finish quickly!!”
“?”
“It’s true—I’d like to stick here until the very last moment if possible. That boy seems like he’ll be a boon to the United Kingdom, after all. I’ll help you out so I can kill time before the limit.”
“Answer three: You don’t need to go that fa—”
“Either way, it seems that when you chose that route, it forced our escape plans to take a time-out.”
Lesser used her thumb to point behind her.
Some Russian Catholic sorcerers had climbed out of their escape containers and were walking toward them.
To spread even more intricately the magic circle Sasha was trying to draw.
With Sasha surprised, Lesser grinned and said, “We’re not stopping this now—not until we get results. We might as well get in our parting shot at Fiamma’s plans while we can.”
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Elsewhere, a band of girls wearing mainly black nun’s habits were racing across a Russian snowfield.
Their clothing seemed Roman Orthodox, but their current location meant they were far, far from home.
It was the former Agnes unit.
The two-hundred-odd Sisters were heading for a place where Academy City and Russian soldiers had fallen.
Battles could be decided on a lot more than killing enemies.
They had their own fight to win.
“Sister Agnes, rescue targets spotted. It’s impossible to evacuate them all outside the explosion’s effective range. As planned, please use the rescue target distribution map to calculate points for shelter construction!!”
“Listen well, Sister Angeline. The shelter applies the theory of Jesus’s swaddling clothes and manger! All nuns specializing in the usage of Mary-type ex-votos are to give instructions immediately upon constructing each shelter!!”
“The large rescue helicopters are standing by three thousand meters behind us! Please get the heavily wounded on board before the next explosion occurs!!”
“The lightly wounded should head to the shelters! We don’t have enough time to get everyone onto the helicopters!!”
It happened in the blink of an eye.
The things they were calling shelters were nothing more than tentlike structures made of wooden frames and big white cloths. However, they shouldn’t have been able to erect them in a few seconds to half a minute. To an unknowing observer, they may have looked like automatically expanding spring-loaded toys.
They began to carry fallen soldiers who could no longer move to the shelters set up in the middle of the battlefield, one after the next.
Both the Academy City and Russian forces were baffled.
They were all humans, and all had the same reaction.
If they’d realized that sooner, maybe the war wouldn’t have gotten so out of control.
“…What…are you do…?” croaked out a man who had been operating an Academy City powered suit. He’d asked the question even as various parts of his body were being wrapped in bandages. “Who are you…with…? Whose side are you on…?”
“Oh, but we did not come all this way to discuss things such as those,” answered one of the black-clothed nuns. “But if I was to answer, I would say our only goal is to reduce the damages of this war by as many individuals as possible.”
“…”
The soldiers were speechless as they watched the Sisters, who were using medicine made from plants rather than the antibiotics they were so used to. To fill in the science, a communication came in to the wood-and-cloth shelter.
A man’s voice echoed from what looked like a card taped to a shelter column. “Sheesh. Fiamma sure is a neat freak. We had no idea his big cleaning spree would be this widespread, man.”
“Then this is part of Fiamma’s purification operation after all?”
“Probably best to assume so. Not only is he destroying the preestablished harmony, he’s creating the materials needed to rebuild… ’Course, if he gives people a new form of matter nobody can destroy—if nobody can work it, it’s just huge pieces of garbage, man.”
Rumble-rumble…!! A sharp, heavy growl shook the snowfield a moment later.
The Academy City man, lying down on the cot, sat up, wincing in pain. The Russian soldier receiving aid the next cot over did the same.
“Damn it. Give me a gun,” groaned the man, reaching out for a nun. “I won’t sit by and wait for them to do us in. I don’t know who you are, but you’re good people—good enough to repay in full. I’ll buy you enough time to escape, at least.”
But the Academy City agent and the Russian soldier wouldn’t have to mount a suicide charge.
They hadn’t even been given that much time.
Truly, it happened in an instant.