ERIE stepped inside and heard a terrible, loud bang from the cellar. Roberta and Jair were still fighting.
Erie ran down the stairs leading to the cellar with Heath. Below, she found a destroyed Eben, Navarov with his back up against the wall, and a haggard Roberta with her hospital gown in shreds.
Jair seized Roberta’s neck in his hand and lifted her up by it.
“STOP!” Erie cried out, but Jair ignored her as he scraped off the letters on Roberta’s forehead.
Roberta’s body trembled with violent spasms until she ceased moving entirely. The red Engrave Incantations floating at the surface of her skin were smothered, like flames put out by a lid. And thus, the Golem girl, who had spent eleven years locked in a tank in the basement of the clinic, crumbled into fine fragments of ash, never to set foot above ground.
Erie clenched her fists so hard her nails cut into her skin and drew blood. Her voice trembling with her sorrow and fury, she shouted the accursed name. “MISTER NAVAROV…!”
Navarov—no, Asusrad Grinzam—pulled a wry, embittered expression at being called by that name.
“You came back? The circumstances aren’t in our favor, but we can’t back down now… Jair, kill Miss Erie.”
Jair nodded and faced Erie. Erie squarely met his gaze. Resentment and hatred far surpassed her despair for being betrayed.
The rage burning in her gut leapt out in a murderous shout. “HEATHY, KILL JAIR!”
Heath swiped out with his knife toward Jair at her command. The knife flashed as it sliced through Jair’s hand. Jair retreated a few steps and held his ground, but Heath stepped forward and thrust in a volley of relentless cuts. The knife stabbed Jair’s arm, contorting his expression. The number of wounds on Jair’s body increased with each gleam and flash of the butcher’s knife in the faintly lit cellar.
I can’t lose! Erie thought, pouring her concentration into the battle. The instant Roberta had defeated Eben, Jair’s fate had been sealed.
He had run away during their battle at the Academy four days ago. But this time they were inside a basement with nowhere to run.
I absolutely won’t let you escape! I’ll put an end to it all here and now! Erie thought.
Jair made a break for her and launched a kick to her side. Heath slid between them, intercepting the blow with his elbows. Without a second to spare, he swung down the knife, cutting Jair.
“Agh!” Blood gushed from Jair’s shoulder and he fell forward. Heath pressed the tip of the knife to his throat.
“Tch…!” Grinzam’s face twisted.
“I have a question for you,” Erie said, looking at him with disgust.
“…What is it?”
“Why did you target me? What do I have to do with your plan?”
“I suppose it’s only natural that you would want to know… Then allow me to present you with my final lecture—on the true power of the cubes.” Grinzam procured a black cube from his chest pocket. “Each Sehem-hamphorasch can take an infinite number of Engrave Incantations. You can even use them to program the body’s interior, and its mind.”
Grinzam’s hands glowed and Engrave Incantations inscribed the surface of the cube. The ancient letters immediately vanished, returning the cube to its slick, black surface.
“You can use them to implement basic human intelligence and instinct. Depending on the Engrave Incantations used, you can even make internal organs and vocal cords that work. It’s even possible to create a personality and memories. You can go as far as to say the Engrave Incantations can give birth to an artificial soul and mind.”
Erie had learned the gist of those capabilities from Ouka. But it was what Grinzam said next that sent shockwaves through her.
“The one thing that came as an utter surprise, you see, was that embedding the original red cube into a body grants it the capacity to manifest the ability necessary for using the all-powerful Remote Engrave Incantation, if so desired. My guess is that the original purpose of the power was to allow the Golem to engrave newly gained knowledge into the cube embedded in its chest.”
“Remote Engrave Incantations…?!” A sudden bad premonition swept over Erie. A mysterious and intense, volcanic anxiety suffocated her.
Grinzam continued his lecture over her silence. “However, that does not mean you can create a human being. You may be able to create a soul—a persona—but we are still incapable of creating a human body. So how do we get around this obstacle?”
Erie felt like she was on the verge of producing the answer. But a fog muddied her mind, obscuring her ability to think. Grinzam lectured on.
“Even if you embed the cube in a corpse, the body will eventually rot away. Embedding it in a living human has no effect, as a living person’s will appears to be far stronger than that of the cube’s power… So what is the answer then?”
The truth was just before her, but Erie didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to consider where the host body would come from.
“The answer is simple: just make a human without a will,” Grinzam said, answering his own question. He pulled a gun from his jacket. It was the same type of gun Kiriko had pointed at Erie the day before—the absurdly powerful tranquilizer gun.
“A medicine that doesn’t kill the person, but renders them completely unconscious and without any will—that’s the weapon the Torah Church made. Do you understand now? Understand how it is you were created, that is.” Grinzam smiled at the speechless Erie and said, “A year ago, I shot you with this concoction and embedded Sehem-hamphorasch in your body while it was in a state of suspended animation.”