She didn’t answer.
Archive touched the floating book. The ground shined around her, then it began to rumble and rise as a dirt giant lifted itself up with her on its shoulder. She didn’t stop there—she shifted her string into another shape, causing indecipherable characters to appear on the walls of the buildings around them. Sharp spikes grew from those walls, all of them aimed at Karamori.
She was projecting concepts onto reality. The fact that she had summoned The Archive, the book from which she took her name, meant that the giant and the spikes were more than they appeared. She had probably imbued them with concepts that she Compiled from vanits in the past.
She was genuinely trying to kill Karamori.
“I should not need to tell you the difficulty of fighting a Distortionist who was given time to prepare,” Archive said from atop the giant. Her eyes were devoid of emotion.
She flicked her wrist, and the giant’s fist and the spikes all rushed at Karamori at once.
Fujinaka, who managed to land safely with her parachute, heard the ground tremor nearby. She looked toward the sound.
“Hngh…!”
She tried to walk and immediately collapsed. Her left knee was swollen purple and bleeding. She’d injured it when she landed.
After managing to move a short distance, she peered around the edge of a building and saw Karamori and Archive fighting within a wall of characters. Archive fought with shocking ferocity as she hounded Karamori with spikes and a dirt giant. He dodged the giant’s blows and used Tyrfing’s scabbard—and occasionally, the blade—to shatter the spikes.
“Karamori…”
He fought with desperation on his face. But Fujinaka thought something looked off about him. He kept briefly pausing. The fight was intense and hard to follow, but she felt like he was passing up chances to attack Archive, instead waiting for her next attack.
“Oh no… Is he not going to attack her? Because he might kill her?”
The source of Archive’s immortality came from the fact that, if she was killed on a day that she wasn’t fated to die, she would revive. But if her words were to be believed, today was that day. There was a chance any regular attack could kill her.
“But then…”
A metal spike stabbed Karamori in the shoulder. A net of text flew at him next, but he cut it down with Tyrfing and backed far away from his opponent.
He was panting heavily. At this rate, he’d only his disadvantage growing larger.
However…
“…!”
Fujinaka noticed Karamori’s eyes. Hope hadn’t faded from them in the slightest. They still shined with honest belief. He hadn’t given up. He may have had no idea how he was going to defy fate, but he was determined to keep fighting to the end.
Karamori’s eyes darted toward Fujinaka. He must have noticed her. His eyes were only on her for the briefest of moments, but the vivid light within them pierced through to her very soul. Feeling propelled by that look, she turned on her heel and ran. Her destination: where she felt Untitled.
“That means the key…is probably you.”
Karamori’s words resonated in her mind. If Archive’s fate was only to help Asahi Fujinaka obtain the Duplicator Trees and assist with his plan, then any unrelated actions she took must have displayed her true intent. They were proof that she was fighting while bound hand and foot by fate.
Fujinaka trembled as she ran, fear wrapped around her legs like snakes.
She was on a battlefield. Someone could try to kill her at any moment, like when Archive appeared out of nowhere and sent the helicopter spiraling. Death could be lurking behind that bush, around the corner of that building, or on the other side of that window.
That was enough to scare her senseless.
But…
Her mind went back to the yakiniku restaurant. Karamori said he chose the path he was currently walking as a way to resist the shackles that fate placed upon him. He did so while bearing the full weight of his past.
He made the same decision today. He chose to oppose fate.
She couldn’t see him fighting and then do nothing herself. The only problem was, she had no idea what she could actually do…
I want to fight, too…!
She responded at the time by saying that “living itself” was her fight. She would do all she could in the here and now. That was her fight. That thought became kindling for the fire blazing in her heart.
Fujinaka sifted through her memories. She had just met Archive, and even she could tell that the girl had done plenty of things around her unnecessary for her own fate.
One such example was teaching her how to use Untitled. If Archive hadn’t helped Fujinaka figure out how to control the book, she would not have been able to sense it from a distance. That was why Fujinaka was here now.
The same could be said for why she was currently taking action. If Archive hadn’t brought down the helicopter, she’d be waiting inside it right now.
Fujinaka was sure of it. Archive was guiding her. She just didn’t know where to. She didn’t know anything about Archive or about vanits. But perhaps her ignorance was what allowed her to see the one guiding light in the darkness.
“Untitled…”
She was here for a reason. There was something only she could do. The book had to be the key.
Fujinaka ran faster.
Those two had entrusted their fates to her.
She liked them both. She had only known them for a few days, but she could tell that despite the brutal world they lived in and the cruel fates they were saddled with, they treated each other like ordinary friends.
If Karamori kills Archive, he’ll never get over it.
That couldn’t be allowed to happen. She knew the terrible weight of having killed loved ones with your own hands. He already lived with a lot of guilt; this could break his spirit completely. She had to stop this somehow.
But I only have one idea…
And that one idea was the last thing she wanted to do.
But…it would be better than one of them having to kill the other…right?
Fujinaka stopped before a building that looked like some kind of toolshed. It was concrete and about the size of a truck container. She felt Untitled within it.
Naturally, there was a huge lock on the iron door.
“Hmm… Should I…? Oh, screw it! That works! Untitled! Just spit it all out! Give me anything and everything!”
She was definitely close enough to control the book. She couldn’t tell through the wall if it actually followed her command…but the loud racket inside the building quickly made it clear that it did. She heard crashes, bangs, and shatters; the concrete walls cracked, and the iron door bent outward.
“Oh geez…”
Sensing danger, Fujinaka backed away. Seconds later, the door blasted off its hinges and an avalanche of random objects spilled out. The chaotic jumble of paintings, small snack bags, books, medium-sized machinery, and more made it impossible to tell what had originally been in the shed.
Fujinaka felt a jolt of anxiety when it occurred to her that the book might have summoned people, too, but she didn’t see any. It must have sensed that she didn’t want it to do that.
Her ploy got the door open, but she had buried Untitled in the process. She was about to start digging, knowing she had no other choice, when something moved in the corner of her vision. She tensed and snapped her head toward it, then saw that it was a round penguin dressed like a knight—Sir Penny. He was holding something toward her with his short flippers.
“Huh…?”
It was a thick green book. It was Untitled—the book she was born from. The sight of it still filled her with hatred and fear. But she needed its power right now.
Fujinaka heard a clink from the pile of junk behind Sir Penny. She looked toward the sound and saw a single coin rolling toward her. It bumped into her feet and fell.
“It’s a coin.”
Archive’s voice surfaced in her memory. She was reminded of the fortune-telling Archive had performed for her what felt like ages ago.
A coin. It represented…
Fujinaka raised her eyebrows and accepted Untitled from Sir Penny.
“Will you help me?”
Sir Penny nodded resolutely in response to his master’s question.
“Let’s go!” Fujinaka declared. She ran back in the direction she’d come from, toward where she heard Karamori and Archive still fighting.
But when she reached them, she found the situation had already passed a point of no return.
Meanwhile, inside Asahi Fujinaka’s workshop, crowded with giant mushrooms and ominous machinery, the floating sphere of water had changed. It used to be five meters wide, but it was now small enough to fit in the palm of one’s hand. It had also begun to glow red.