“I wanted to be with you forever, too.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Crack-crack-crackle-crackle!! With a sound like ice breaking, the color of the monster’s wings began to change. From a deep ink-black to an immaculate snowy white. From their roots to their tips, in mere instants, everything—from its outer coloring to its inner essence—began to be replaced.
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
Just above his head, a small ring of the same color appeared.
This was how he had changed.
How his mind, the wellspring from which his singular power gushed forth into this real world, had altered.
Accelerator placed his hands on Last Order’s tiny shoulders and gave her a soft push. Like an astronaut in zero gravity, the recoil caused his body to float gently into the air.
Last Order’s small hands reached toward the man in the air.
But they didn’t reach.
Accelerator was already floating several meters high.
This was the right thing to do.
Convinced of that, Accelerator flapped his pearly wings. They were giant, reaching hundreds of meters in length, and they didn’t change mere wind force into lift but, instead, had a much stranger energy: They applied zero force to the surface, and yet, his body shot straight up like a cannonball.
In the blink of an eye, he ascended three thousand meters, scattering the edges of the thick clouds about to cover up the skies.
The aerial fortress moved at the same time.
A mass of golden energy, taken from above and accumulated on its lower part, dropped without mercy. He felt the sort of pressure that sent people’s spines tingling. As he’d thought, it, like Accelerator’s white wings, was not a normal power. His reflection probably wouldn’t affect it, either. Reflection’s power would penetrate it, just like when Aiwass had defeated him.
But so what?
Accelerator worked his white wings even more, skyrocketing his ascension speed. He headed straight for that falling golden mass without using any tricks. There was even a subtle smile on his lips.
I get it, thought Accelerator belatedly.
This is what it’s like to fight to protect something.
✦ ✦ ✦
A moment later, at an altitude of eight thousand meters, two enormous forces collided.
✦ ✦ ✦
Whu-whuuuump!!!!!! A tremendous impact rocked the Star of Bethlehem.
There was an explosion of golden light.
“What…?”
However, the great calamity Fiamma of the Right expected to assault the earth never came to pass. And the surface was never steeped in the same gold as the skies. Some other factor had stopped the large-scale telesma that was dropped from the Star of Bethlehem.
“It should have had enough output!! Destruction enough to fulfill my strategic objective on the surface should have assured my victory!! What in the world…?!”
The tragedy he’d hoped for hadn’t happened.
Malice’s amplification went unrecognized, with the tragedy instead having been held in check—and thanks to that, the dark parts of people’s hearts were starting to be wiped away.
Perhaps it was no more than temporary, like the feeling of oneness with the world only felt during sporting festivals, the heat of wild excitement.
However.
Even if for no more than an instant, those on the surface must have thought this.
This world is doing fine with just us.
Your condescending salvation can fuck off.
“You good now?”
Touma Kamijou, fist clenched, took a step forward.
One step. Two steps. Three steps.
“It’s about time for your illusions to call it quits.”
With a boooooom!!!!!! he turned his steps into a run, all at once.
Kamijou didn’t need any silly tricks. All he’d do was get close, fair and square, as close as he could. In response, Fiamma of the Right swung the symbol of his power, his third arm, with all his might. Even the Imagine Breaker wouldn’t be able to cancel out the enormous power packed inside. If he failed to divert its path, it would be able to pulverize his entire right arm. Perhaps that was what Fiamma thought when he used brute force to try to eliminate the obstacle before his eyes.
But Kamijou didn’t stop.
As soon as he rammed his right fist squarely into the oncoming third arm, Fiamma’s greatest weapon, that malformed arm, was squarely blown away.
Fresh blood and flesh danced.
His third arm, which had finally gained flesh, lost its vessel, shaking in agony in midair.
“Wha…what?!” cried Fiamma, face warping, as though an unknown and intense pain had slammed into him like an avalanche.
It wasn’t that Kamijou’s power had been increased or anything. The Imagine Breaker was still only the Imagine Breaker.
Fiamma’s third arm, which responded to malice, had weakened to the point where even the Imagine Breaker could destroy it. As a result of that small goodness rippling out to cover the surface, the shaft supporting Fiamma’s power had broken.
The power that made Fiamma of the Right special no longer existed.
Indirect forms of attack from the third arm were unlikely, of course—but so was his evasive maneuver that instantly moved him kilometers away in a horizontal direction.
And now, nothing stood in the way of Touma Kamijou’s advance.
“Shit…!!”
Fiamma thrust Index’s remote-control Soul Arm in front of him. He tried to use the knowledge in the 103,000 grimoires to intercept the approaching Kamijou. He felt a terrible, stabbing headache, as though his defenses had weakened, too, upon losing his special power, but he ignored it and continued to search the knowledge base. His eyes were a declaration that he’d kill the enemy before him no matter what it took.
But then Fiamma heard a voice.
It belonged to what he was supposedly magically connected to—the library of grimoires.
…Warning. Chapter 88, Verse 1. Anomaly detected in currently searching main body. Excess of external stimulation has caused a serious reduction in search efficiency.
“…?!”
The index’s main body was supposed to be in safekeeping in St. George’s Cathedral. If external stimuli had caused an error, then an English Puritan sorcerer must have done something.
His final option was totally cut off.
This was the difference between the two.
The decisive difference between one who had only polished his power to stand alone at the peak and one who had struggled to stand at that peak through the help of others.
The small, unimportant high school student tightened his right fist and ran toward the king manipulating the world.
Deeply.
Sharply.
All the way to a throne that had never let any others near it.
And then it happened.
Slllppp…!! Kamijou’s feet suddenly sank.
The Star of Bethlehem was weakening.
Its power source from Fiamma of the Right severed, it had naturally begun to collapse.
At the very, very end, something had stopped Touma Kamijou.
And it was called…
Rotten luck.
Fiamma’s lips twisted eerily.
He focused his mind on the remote-control Soul Arm in his hand one more time.
Five, ten seconds—that’s all I need. That’s long enough for me to rewire the grimoire library’s settings!! I don’t care if the high load burns out the 103,000 volumes. I will wash away this enemy before me right now!!
“Oo—”
However.
Touma Kamijou’s forward march didn’t stop there.
The boy shouted and plunged ever onward.
“—ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”