He leaned forward precariously as he approached the Angel-Eater—first, I had him bring down his right fist.
In that moment, the Angel-Eater disappeared from the first-person view.
“Guh?!”
A sharp, searing hot pain raced through my right side. It was the first time I’d felt such distinct pain since summoning Pandora.
Even though Pandora was dead, his pain receptors clearly weren’t. Since I’d synced as much as I could with Pandora to control his corpse, it felt like my own body.
The Angel-Eater had cut through Pandora’s side once she was close enough.
“Gah! Ow!”
This time, I felt my back and the back of my thigh burning.
She’d moved around to Pandora’s back with unbelievable speed, cutting lengthwise all the way to the base of Pandora’s ten wings; with a flowing movement, she had sliced up to his femur.
I wouldn’t be able to see her just from the first-person perspective. So I relied on the distant views to use Pandora’s thick, long tails to restrain her.
She just barely escaped them and tried to cut through a blue-black tail with her sword, but she didn’t manage. The endoskeleton also hiding within Pandora had firmly stopped the Angel-Eater’s sword, making her open Sasha’s amethyst eyes wide.
“Dammit! Nobody told me it’d even hurt my rear!”
It felt like she’d actually cut through my flesh and been stopped at the bone.
I contracted the muscles of the tail until the Angel-Eater’s left sword was stuck in place, then brought down a karate chop as soon as we were facing her.
Right then, Pandora’s right hand broke the sound barrier and cut through the Angel-Eater’s left shoulder.
This was what had happened as a result of the Angel-Eater’s own choices. Her body, which had been specialized entirely for combat, broke to pieces as easily as glasswork. Her left arm, which was no longer connected to her main body, cracked and shattered. It didn’t regenerate after that, either.
She tried to back away immediately.
But I didn’t move Pandora. I already knew I wouldn’t win against her in a battle of speed anyway. Even as I panted from my magic deficit, I chuckled to myself. “Of course the legendary beast Pandora could stand up to a god’s power.”
I had no idea how long the wounded Pandora and the wounded Angel-Eater—Sasha and I—faced each other without a word.
When I stared at Sasha’s beautiful face and she stared back at me, I suddenly murmured, “Real nuisance of a job ya left me with…”
Then my eyes traveled to the silver rose blooming at the Angel-Eater’s chest as I said, “I know there’s still a chance of saving you… This is way better than with my pa, at least…”
The silver rose—Sasha had to be in there. And she had to be alive.
Call it conviction, but I had a strangely certain feeling it was true.
That was right. Sasha Shidoh Zultania wouldn’t have died just because she’d been turned into the Angel-Eater of Silver’s linchpin. The strongest person in the school—someone who’d assimilated with an archangel—wasn’t going down that easy.
No matter how bad things got, she’d always ride through it with that same unruffled look on her face. That was why she was the most powerful one out of all of us.
She had to be holding out even now within the Angel-Eater.
I’ll save you, so just hold out a little longer, I willed her.
To be frank, I didn’t care whether she wanted to be saved or not. I had a word or two for her after the nitwit had run off to sacrifice herself for the world. I hadn’t even gotten to challenge her again since the ranking match, and I wasn’t gonna let her just quit while she was ahead.
The only reason I needed to risk my life saving Sasha were those emotions that overflowed from my chest—that was probably enough.
“…Sorry, Sasha, today’s the day I’m gonna be tellin’ you off.”
Those were the last easygoing words I was able to manage.
Suddenly, the Angel-Eater rammed into Pandora with one arm and one sword.
I tried to meet her with a fist, but she went even faster, and there was no way I’d be hitting that. She was quicker than I could perceive, practically moving like a sword dancer as she tore through Pandora’s outstretched right arm.
“Tsk!!”
I realized I’d never be able to land a fist on her like this. I tried to whip Pandora’s left arm at her, but even that didn’t hit her. The only thing Pandora could manage to make contact with was the lingering end of a lock of her silvery hair as she somersaulted through the air. In that moment, I realized I needed to prepare for the long haul.
“Myfila! Don’t think! Inject it!” I yelled, and she administered a third round of the tonic.
When I breathed in through the nose, it was followed by a bunch of blood. “Gah!! Gah-hah! Gah!!” I threw up more bile, along with a wad of blood, but kept my eyes trained in front of me.
The first-person perspective wasn’t useful anymore. Even the long-range view just made me painfully aware of how much faster she was.
Still, I kept my eyes ahead of me.
Even as she kept cutting into Pandora, I brought up his fist.
From the long-range view, all I saw under the thick overhang of clouds was the Legendary Beast of the Last Realm’s entire body spurting blood as he rampaged. The Angel-Eater of Silver just barely managed to avoid his fists, slicing through the beast as she pleased.
We had no other secret plans.
We had no secret weapons beyond Pandora.
I’d keep moving no matter how many times she sliced through him. I’d continue to flail until my last moment, just as if I were a beast. That was the one and only hope that remained for Pandora and me.
“Myfila! One more!” I’d used my magic up before I knew it and was calling out to Myfila.
“Y-you can’t! Any more and you’ll die, Feil!”
After seeing my bloody nose and the blood in my vomit, Myfila gripped the tonic in her hand tightly. She shook her head furiously despite my demands.
I didn’t hesitate…
“This isn’t the time to be scared—!”
It was the first time I’d done anything like this to Myfila. I’d reached out to her where she’d approached me, wrestling the test tube away from her by force.
“Feil, stop! Please!”
I ignored her tears and her cries to stop as I injected the needles into my neck.
“I’m a summoner…!! Even if my heart stops, even if my skull ruptures, I ain’t backin’ down here!!”
The left side of my vision was turning red. Tears of blood spilled from my left eye. I tried to fix my vision by rubbing the left side of my face hard with my robes, but all I managed was to smear the blood all over. My left side stayed red, and my vision didn’t come back.
So what? How did that change anything?
The Angel-Eater was way faster than I could see anyway. Pandora and I pushed through the pain of our entire body and entrails being hacked up as we could only wave around our fists at random.
Just one!! Just one blow would be enough!! I kept saying to myself.
“Even if I’m up against Sasha an’ an Executioner, I’ve got the god-killin’ beast on my side! At this point, it’s just a battle of wills!!” I spat up blood as I shouted to amp myself up.
Pandora’s revolving backhand struck both of the Angel-Eater’s legs as she leaped through the air. Didn’t seem too bad for a lucky blow after being sliced to pieces.
Once she lost both of her legs, the Angel-Eater couldn’t even stand, so she simply tumbled along the ground, still holding her sword.
My Pandora, the bluish-black grotesque beast, remained upright. He was so beat up, I had no idea if there was any part of his body that hadn’t been sliced open, but regardless of that, both his feet were flat on the ground as he looked down on the Angel-Eater.
Finally, in the end, it looked like the shoe was on the other foot.
Then the moment I had Pandora take a step forward to finish her off…
“Huh?”
…I’d lost all ability to even hold myself up and fell face-first into Pandora’s brain. As part of the natural progression of things, I couldn’t keep up Linebolt, either, and Pandora slowly fell to his knee.
I could feel the tremors of his landing even from within his skull.
“Hey, Feil! What happened, Feil?! Are you okay—?” Cyril’s voice, which should have been coming in directly through my ear, sounded far-off.
I’d run out of magic again. I forced myself to look at Myfila, even as my body refused to budge.
“No. You can’t anymore!!”
In an attempt to save my life, Myfila smashed the last vial of tonic.
…The broken pieces of glass and dragon’s blood were scattered over the ground.
…………
But I wasn’t done yet. I still had something left to squeeze out of me.
I pressed out what little remaining strength I had to plunge my hand into the neck of my robes, pulling out my cherished pouch, and throwing all the contents out.
The paper notes and grimy coins spilled out, including the gold and silver coins my old man had given to me when he died.
“Power—”
I haphazardly grabbed my father’s coins and stuck them in my mouth.
“I need power—”
As I thought long and hard about my dead father, I gnashed down on the coins with my back teeth, practically trying to break through the silvers, then I raised my hand up high and yelled to the heavens like my life depended on it, “Lend me your poweeeer!!”
What I relied on as a last resort was my own soul, the pent-up emotions still burning strong in the back of my heart.
In that moment, Pandora, who should have still been dead, finally responded to my feelings for the first time.
“ROOOOAAARRR!!”
He bellowed heroically even without me feeding magic through his brain.
Still on one knee, he turned up to the heavens, just like me, and let out a cry I was sure the entire world had heard.
The Angel-Eater was coming to attack us from straight overhead after having forced herself to leap even without her legs.
She brought down the sword she had brandished high in the air.
“Pandoraaaa!!” I shouted.
But now, in just this moment, Pandora and I were freer than the Angel-Eater.
Pandora’s ten wings suddenly began to open.
His right hand, which should have been slack, flew even faster into the air than the Angel-Eater.
—!!
His outstretched right hand had opened all its fingers, as though seeking something—until it reached the blooming flower on the Angel-Eater of Silver’s chest and tore through it.
The same moment Pandora’s right hand went through her chest, the bright-blue sky reappeared.
The impact of Pandora’s fist hadn’t stopped at piercing the Angel-Eater—it sent a shock wave overhead through the giant field, through Raddermark’s sky, and even beyond into the mountain ranges, clearing all the heavy snow-laden clouds from the atmosphere.