I wanted to come right out and say that, but there wouldn’t be any god anywhere to hear it anyway.
“How’d it get from you to Bernhart Hadcheck, then?”
“B-Bernhart? I’m not sure—I have no idea. I don’t even know who Bernhart is. I’m telling the truth.”
Then, next, he showed me his right hand and that its four fingers had cruelly been lopped off right at their bases, leaving only his thumb.
“I stole a valuable object of research from the temple. There were many chasing me, and it’s possible one of the people the temple sought help from might have gone by that name.”
Seeing that gave me a start, but it wasn’t enough to cool me down now that I was seething.
Actually, I almost wanted to laugh it off by telling him the pursuer must’ve been kind only taking four fingers. What probably happened was that he’d refused to let go of the silver chalice and had lost it along with his digits.
“So somebody must’ve sold it to Bernhart on the black market…! I wanna find ’em and give ’em an ass-kickin’, but now’s not the time…”
After coming to that conclusion, I decided not to ask more about Bernhart.
He’d been looking for an artifact to use for the summons festival and must have bought information on the Angel-Eater of Silver. Even if he might’ve gotten his hands on it that way, it was all already too late to change at this point.
Anyway, right now, I needed to know how to stop the Angel-Eater, so I asked the man firmly, “What happens if it eats a weak angel instead of an archangel? Will it stop eventually?”
But after refusing to meet my eyes for a while, the man finally shook his head weakly.
“No. It’ll probably stay in that incomplete state and keep looking for the archangel.”
“An’ what makes you say that?”
“The Angel-Eater of Silver’s power source isn’t angels. It’s the linchpin that stabilizes its liquid form. The reason why it’s so persistent about taking the archangel is because its foremost priority is to construct a form that can kill Pandora. When I traveled with the Angel-Eater, there was a vision I always saw… It was likely one of its own memories… When the seven Angel-Eaters faced Pandora, only two were able to harm the beast.”
This was new—that the Angel-Eater had multiple bodies.
I didn’t pursue that line of thought and instead ground my teeth out of anger at my classmate again.
“He got manipulated tryin’ to win… Figures for Bernhart. Thought he could just use some random angel to do it…!”
Then, while I still kept him pinned, the man stared at one of the giant silver feelers quivering at the wall and murmured, “I didn’t see the Angel-Eater look so formless in my visions. I don’t think that’s what the Angel-Eater wanted to turn out like, either.”
Even in my flustered state, his voice seemed ridiculously soft to me.
I finally let go of his neck and faced him directly as I talked.
“Please tell me what the summoners need to do in order to beat that thing.”
The man looked directly at me as he shook his head.
“I’m not sure.”
“Ya didn’t see anythin’ in your visions? You said the Angel-Eater had seven bodies in the past. How’d Pandora defeat ’em back then?”
“Through plain brute force. He used his fists to break the angels that made up their cores. That thing over there… It doesn’t look or act like the Angel-Eaters Pandora defeated. I don’t think you’d be able to defeat it in the same way.”
After that, the man suddenly looked behind me and turned his eyes down right away. “…Princess Sasha…”
“Sasha?”
I’d been so focused on the man in front of me that I hadn’t been paying attention to the changes around me. When I turned around, I saw Zylgar and Cyril, Myfila, and also Sasha riding on top of him.
They must have seen my giant grasshopper in the road and come down here.
“When did ya start listenin’ in?” I asked, instead of explaining. Cyril was the one to answer.
“We just got here, but we know everything.”
“What?”
“Feil, you yell way too loud. I thought my ears were going to burst.” Cyril stuck out his tongue at me as he dismounted Zylgar. The Voice Link circle was on his tongue…then I realized right then I’d had transmission magic invoked that entire time.
“Sorry. Forgot to turn it off.”
Cyril didn’t really complain, though. “It’s fine. Saves us the hassle of having you explain again.” He helped Myfila and Sasha off the giant tiger.
I had no clue why Sasha was also riding with them. Thinking she might’ve come up with a way to stop the Angel-Eater, I started walking over to her.
Then I… No, not just me—everyone in the place realized that “night” had suddenly come overhead.
“Y-you gotta be kiddin’ me!!”
When I looked up at the sky, I didn’t find it overhead.
Instead of the overcast clouds and light flecks of snow, I saw a smooth surface that fully cut off the sunlight in an unnatural way, even for the winter. Not only that, but the various flying summons that had been protecting the northern wall until that very minute were all being driven away by the flat surface that had appeared.
It was the Angel-Eater of Silver.
The Angel-Eater, which had been retreating whenever the flying beasts and summoners intercepted it, had finally made a full appearance despite its behavior until now.
Its massive body had worked itself over the wall.
The dragons blasted it with their full power, scorching the air.
I saw the blinding flashes of the summoners’ desperate attempts at last-ditch feats of magic. But they could no longer make the Angel-Eater budge now that it’d overtaken the entire sky. It easily accepted every blow humanity could give it but didn’t stop in the slightest in its pursuit.
It was trying to engulf the entirety of Raddermark now.