“I have no idea how you think you’re going to reverse this situation…but you may have a point…!” Trembling, Randy readied his fists. “I’ve…still got my hopes and dreams…! There’s no way I’m gonna die like this!”
“Indeed! I, too, have great aspirations I have yet to accomplish!”
“M-me too… I have things I want to do in the future…and I don’t want to give up yet… I can’t let it all end here!”
Serephina and Annie took up their wands and faced Anna.
As they did, Professor Anna took one look at all of them.
“Goodness…what a bother. What is that? Your dreams? Your aspirations? You can only get away with that kind of excuse in a fantasy novel,” she scoffed, exasperated. “Do you really think you can win against me? You little fledgling chicks? Even when I am in possession of a second-class Demon Relic?”
“…What…?”
“A Demon…what?”
Rix and Randy cocked their heads in confusion at the unfamiliar vocabulary.
“Y-you don’t mean…?! Y-you…!”
Shino, who had been staying silent up until now, suddenly raised her head as her expression twisted into one of shock and despair.
Anna grinned back at her.
And then she began to chant an incantation.
“…I in the mirror see not I but thee; two sides of a coin the same, seeking truth, we fellows in name…”
In that instant, like the flip of a switch, Rix started rushing toward Anna.
“Rix?!”
He moved at incredible speed. Faster than they had ever seen him move before. So fast he gouged out the ground in his wake.
“…!”
Burning with a special kind of irritation, Rix ran at Anna, thrusting his sword toward her.
He felt it. He knew he couldn’t allow her to complete that incantation.
If she did, something terrible would happen.
If she did, they would all die. There would be no way for them to win.
But a swarm of Chaos Beasts closed in and got in Rix’s way. They came at him like a wave.
He slashed them down from end to end, but there were too many of them for him to break through.
As Rix fought the beasts, Anna continued her incantation.
“O faceless one, clad in white, fluttering thy wings pure and untainted, descend unto this world…”
“Serephina! You have to stop herrrrrrrr!”
Serephina came back to her senses with a gasp as she took up her rapier.
“Charge and trample, crimson chakram!”
Serephina, who usually cast flames with chantless spellcasting, had gone out of her way to chant an incantation.
She cast Flaming Wheel, the strongest flame spell she had learned so far.
A humongous wheel, formed by enormous heat and flames, spun and rushed toward Anna. But even that was blocked by the Chaos Beasts that kept multiplying without end.
The flaming wheel merely smashed through and burned a dozen or so of those beasts without ever reaching the professor.
“Guh?!”
And during this struggle—
“O ye who returns the earth to the void with thy flames of black.”
—Anna completed her incantation.
Then the darkness around them…suddenly became deeper.
A magic circle appeared under Anna’s feet, and an immense amount of mana began to flow through it.
Then the shadows beneath Anna’s feet wriggled and spread—and something appeared out of the abyss of those shadows.
In a word…it might have been best described as an angel. It had a form like a human, robed in white, with pure white wings.
However—it was undeniably grotesque.
Where its face should be, there was an open hole. Its limbs looked inorganic, almost like a machine.
Nevertheless, it had a tremendous presence and amount of magical power.
It was an existence so hopeless and absolute that you were made to realize you were no better than an ant crawling on the ground in comparison—it was a perfect superior to human beings.
“…Ah…”
“…Uh…”
“…”
Seeing it with their own eyes, Randy, Serephina, and Annie went completely speechless and fell to their knees. All they could do was stare blankly up at the strange angel.
There was no way to win. They had completely lost the will to fight.
How in the world could they stand up to something that clearly dominated humanity?
However:
“Graaaaaaaaaahhh—!”
Rix was the only one who moved.
He broke through the crowd of beasts and faced the angel that stood in front of Anna, swinging his sword fiercely against it.
Clang!
But his blade, which Shino had strengthened with her magic, broke perfectly in two.
The next moment, the angel swiftly moved its hand; countless beams of light rained down from the heavens.
And where they landed, the earth was battered with explosions.
Rix was swallowed up in the flashes of light they caused.
He was able to barely avoid a direct hit by dodging as fast as he could—but the aftermath of the explosions knocked him back and completely blew him away.
“Riiiiiiiiiix!”
Rix’s body rolled away like a kicked ball before finally stopping when it slammed into the magic barrier that enveloped the plaza.
His whole body looked burned and bloodied, with his right hand and left leg bent in the wrong directions.
No one could tell if he was dead or alive.
“Everyone…have you heard of faith magic?”
Anna, accompanied by the deformed angel, calmly spoke to the group as they trembled in fear, unable to even run to Rix’s side.
She sounded as if she was giving a lecture at the academy.
“On the other side of this world…exists the Astral Realm. It is inhabited by all kinds of illusory beings…Chaos Beasts, spirits, fairies, demons,” she said. “However, in the deepest, darkest layers of the Astral Realm—an area known as the Qlippoth—there are unfathomable Great Beings that go beyond our human knowledge. To define them in our own terms, I speak of gods, angels, and devils.
“By extending the bounds of your Sphere to the Qlippoth, you can connect with these Great Beings, communicate with them, and summon them back to this world as another version of yourself, using your own Sphere as a surrogate. And this is what we call faith magic. It is the most sublime magic that exists in this world, the closest to the truth, and the greatest power of all.”
“I-it can’t be… Professor Anna…a-are you…?!” cried Serephina.
“Yes, that’s correct.” Together with the angel, Anna gracefully bowed. “I am one of the high-ranking members of the Faith Faction—Anna the Fair. And I am contracted with the Fair-Faced Angel, one pillar of the high-ranking Great Beings. But no need to remember all that…aside from Shino, you four will die here today.”