Partway through his sentence, a pure white arrow struck and pierced one of his six wings, rendering it useless. However, the angel could simply grow it back with little effort. He paused in the air for a moment.
“Well, far be it from me to refuse Cupid’s arrow. Perhaps a change of plan is in order.”
Rheinhardt’s smile was murderous as he dived toward the ground, landing in the middle of the street before his two nemeses. The road was completely free of ghouls—save Leon, of course. Claire’s disciple must have been hard at work, aided by the nosy girl at his side.
The angel first looked to his former ally and sneered.
“Hah. Thought you liked ’em a bit older than that. That girl of yours must be quite the smooth talker. Burrowed her way into your rotten heart, has she?”
There was no trace of self-destruction in Leon’s crimson eyes now. Quite the opposite, in fact. A fierce determination to survive and to live out his days with the girl by his side.
“Well, partner, I, for one, welcome the change. It’ll make it that much more satisfying to kill the both of you.”
There was evil in the angel’s violet eyes. But Leon could not back down now. Nor could his apprentice.
“Not on my life! It shall be you who falls this day!” Alice yelled as the crimson bracelet on her wrist began to glow. In the blink of an eye, she was clad in full plate metal once more.
“Ahh, jeez. Didn’t I warn you about that? …I thought I said to get your damn hands off her things!”
Rheinhardt’s simmering anger bubbled over and erupted into full-blown fury. Red-faced, he flew into battle. Alice stepped forward while Leon fell back. Rheinhardt, meanwhile, took the initiative.
“Piss off, bitch!”
The angel spread his six wings, scattering snow-white feathers. As soon as Alice got near to them, there was a blinding white flash and burst of heat. So, this was the attack he used right after Leon failed to blow himself up—the one that took out the entire area along with twenty-four of the church’s best men. It worked by transmuting the feathers into powerful explosives and detonating them. The resulting explosion could flatten a city block if deployed over a large enough area, and when brought to bear against a single target, the blast could be devastating.
This time, Rheinhardt was opting for the latter strategy. Decreasing the area of effect in order to obtain a comparative increase in power. The heat energy alone would be enough to atomize anything caught in its path.
Discounting, of course, the armor Alice was wearing. The suit that once belonged to the legendary hero, Claire Redheart, and that only she was capable of utilizing to its fullest potential. This impregnable feat of smithery could weather any blow, even an angel’s divine might.
As the smoke cleared, it gave way to a glimmering pair of eyes. Then…
“Roaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
A scream cut through the dusty veil. The battle cry of Alice Campbell. Transforming her pure-white bow into its twin-blade form, she launched herself at the enemy.
“Haaaah!”
Alongside Alice’s yell came a movement so swiftly executed, it was impossible for Rheinhardt to dodge. By the time he realized she was close, his body was already divided into seven.
“Tch!”
Regenerating swiftly, he took off into the air. From there, he hoped to unleash an aerial bombardment that left no room for a counterattack.
“Yaaaah!”
With explosive speed, Alice turned her weapon back into a bow and let off a glimmering volley, aided by the accelerative abilities of the crimson armor. All in all, close to fifty arrows shot toward Rheinhardt…
“Nrh…!”
…and peppered the angel, filling him full of holes.
Rheinhardt never even got an attack in. Despite his potent transmutation and regeneration abilities, the angel had one weakness: a low level of physical ability. In this respect, he was even weaker than the Ogre fought at Karna Village.
“Raaaah!”
This shortcoming gave rise to Alice’s strategy: A full-on assault, leaving no time to strike back. Even if Rheinhardt saw the attacks coming…
“Dammit! That’s not fair, you rotten ghoul!”
…Leon prevented him from fighting back. He stood at a distance, providing supporting fire with his handgun. Rheinhardt was only slightly more resilient than the average human, and a bullet worked just as well on him as it did on anyone else.
While Alice kept up her fierce assault, Leon assisted from behind. Their aims were as one, namely…
“Grr…! You’re trying to run me out of Source, aren’t you, partner?!”
Whether human or monstrous in nature, all supernatural powers required the Source. Even Rheinhardt’s abilities were useless without it.
“You sly dog! That’s the same trick you pulled back in Regtelia Town!”
And it was a solid plan. Rheinhardt was nigh immortal with his regenerative powers, but they couldn’t keep going forever. Once his Source was drained, he was as killable as anyone.
And the act of regenerating cost Source. So by keeping up the assault, Rheinhardt would eventually run dry. However…
“That’s only if I don’t kill you before that happens!”
Rheinhardt’s expression slowly reverted to a smile. And just then…
“Krh…hrh…!”
A grunt of pain emerged from Alice’s lips, and she stopped. She had been fighting at her limit ever since the battle began, and she could go no longer. All that yelling as she dueled the angel was not to showcase her fighting spirit; it was to disguise her screams of agony.
“That armor was made by Emilia for Master and for Master alone. You can’t use it, do you understand me? You can’t.”
Rheinhardt looked down from the sky at the fallen Alice, a shrewd grin on his lips.
“You know, while you were kicking the shit out of me, I thought of something. A way to make the two of you suffer!”
He darted toward the ground, wearing a sadistic smile. Heading not for Alice but for Leon.
“Time to end this, partner!”
Leon’s death would be devastating for Alice. The guilt would crush her. And Leon would be forced to watch his beloved disciple’s despair-ridden face as Rheinhardt’s blades sent him to hell. It was the most tragic ending imaginable to the pair’s tale, but to the angel, it was hard to think of anything more satisfying.
“Master!”
Her scream was truly awful; heartrending. Even Rheinhardt was convinced…and so he didn’t realize he’d been tricked until it was all over.
The angel swooped toward his old friend and materialized a sword in his outstretched hand. With it, he sliced Leon clean in two. Not instantly fatal for the ghoul, but enough that death would soon follow. Between Alice’s look of horror and Leon’s look of shock, Rheinhardt smiled. It was only in the next moment that all his expectations got turned on their head.
For the body of the ghoul began to fade, giving way to a single roll of paper.
“What?! A scroll?!”
Now, at last, he realized the duo’s aim. It wasn’t to deplete him of Source energy at all. It was all to lead him to this moment: a single millisecond of triumph, wherein the angel would let down his guard.
And from the side, an attack came. Right on cue, at the most perfect possible moment.
“Rest well, old friend.”
Leon Crossheart was there. Hiding in a dark alley leading off the main street, tossing an item small enough to fit in the palm of his hand.
“A bomb—!”
Rheinhardt’s eyes flew open at the very moment Leon’s bullet pierced the device.
Those who lived in the far east were known to cremate their dead. Consigning the body to flame was thought to allow the soul to escape into heaven. Leon thought of that as he watched the towering inferno before him. The tight cylinder of fire stretched up and up into the clear blue sky, seemingly without end. Leon spared a word of prayer for his partner’s soul.
“…It’s over. It’s all over.”
The explosive device Emilia created in order to defeat Rheinhardt did two things. It released an enormous amount of heat, and it also set up a barrier to trap all that heat inside.
After the events of four years ago, Leon had learned everything there was to know about his old friend. His abilities…and his weaknesses.
Rheinhardt’s twin powers were matter reconstruction and control. They bordered on unfair, allowing Rheinhardt to conjure up a wide variety of effects. No matter the substance, the angel could bend it to his whim…but it was not unbeatable.
As with all supernatural abilities, it required Source energy to function, but there was another, less obvious drawback: It required something to control in the first place. With that in mind, Leon came up with a way to kill the angel for good.
First, create a vacuum completely absent of matter. Then trap the angel within it, and finally, use an intense heat to burn him to ash. This was the theory that ultimately led to the creation of Emilia’s bomb, which used Sacraments to produce the vacuum, contain the target, and burn it with fire.
Two of these bombs were made. The first was sewn into Leon’s flesh, while it was agreed the second would be left in Emilia’s workshop, in case the initial plan should fail.
“How ironic that the Church’s order is what saved me.”
The two bombs were built with different triggering mechanisms. The first could only be triggered by the bearer, while the second came with a remote control. This was at the insistence of the Church; while they had no objections to Leon blowing himself up, they couldn’t allow innocent human life to be sacrificed in the same way.
Anyway, it was over. At long last, it was all over. Leon cast his eyes skyward, as if hoping to see his brother’s soul one last time as it departed for paradise.
“…Rheina,” he said. “I was willing to take your hate and consign it to the soil alongside myself… But I can’t. I have her now. I’m sorry.”
When his time came, Leon would gladly bare his sin before the Lord, but that time was far off yet.
He heard Alice’s voice.
“We…we did it, didn’t we, Master? Now…we can…”