He accidentally sliced a fire bird in two, causing it to explode. A quick jump backward allowed him to avoid the full force of the blast, but it still hit him at close range and sent him flying. He managed to land on his feet, but the moment he did so, the fire sword pierced his abdomen.
“Gaaah!”
His body sizzled like meat on a grill, but the pain was so excruciating he barely heard it. It felt like his very soul was being burned. As the intense pain threatened to rob him of consciousness, his leg kicked out almost involuntarily, hitting Pyrovault and allowing him to back up off the sword.
Karamori fell to the floor. His hands were shaking, and he was close to hyperventilating. He had bled enough for it to be visible through his black full-body suit. He looked like he was in no state to fight.
He scrambled back to his feet and readied his sword, but Pyrovault’s hellish assault didn’t continue.
“How the hell are you still standing?” Pyrovault said.
He stared in wonder at Karamori’s stomach. The stab wound was gruesome and smoking. It looked like the Canary suit’s automatic healing properties had kicked in, but there was no way he should have been on his feet.
“Looks like I just happened to miss any vital organs,” Pyrovault, sighing exasperatedly. “That’s enough. I’m getting bored. You win. Your inability to die is just gonna get on my nerves.”
Karamori glared at the man.
“I told you before, didn’t I? I don’t really bear a grudge against you… Ha-ha. Now that I think about it, your sword’s influence might be the reason I got bored and decided to quit fighting.”
“…”
Karamori didn’t respond. That was partially because he was still too out of breath to speak, but more so because he felt the same way as his opponent.
“How about I take your sword’s distortion for you instead?” Pyrovault said, sticking out his left hand. There was no good intent visible in his expression, but no bad intent, either.
Karamori’s eyes went wide. He looked down at the sword. He could be released from Tyrfing. Was there anything he wanted more? And yet…
“I don’t need your help,” Karamori said, looking up and rejecting the offer with a grin. “Accepting that would leave me with nothing but my twisted life. And also…”
He held the blue sword at the ready, a light strong enough to defy fate filling his eyes.
“No fate is so absolute that you can’t cut your own path through it. Someone I know taught me that!”
Pyrovault raised his eyebrows. Just then, a figure appeared at the workshop’s entrance. It was a heavily panting girl with the morning sun at her back—Hitsugi Fujinaka.
“Karamori!” she shouted, waving enthusiastically and then giving him a thumbs-up, her cheeriness feeling out of place. The hope in her eyes seemed to outshine the sun behind her.
Karamori’s grin widened.
“That thought is all I need to fight on!”
He dashed at Pyrovault and slashed his sword upward with all his might. Pyrovault was ready—he summoned STOP onto his coat again to halt the sword’s tip.
The sword slashed his abdomen anyway.
Pyrovault looked down in shock as Karamori completed his swing.
“What the…?!”
He noticed something as blood flew from his wound. STOP had disappeared from his coat.
He leaped away from Karamori and looked at Fujinaka. The brown-haired girl was holding a green book—Untitled. Her knees knocked with fear, but her face was determined.
Karamori pursued, not letting the older man retreat, and quickly swung his sword upward. Pyrovault instinctively summoned STOP, but the letters were immediately torn off his coat and sucked into Untitled. He then tried to wrench his body out of the way, but he was just too late, and the sword grazed his shoulder.
Pyrovault winced and looked at Fujinaka again, a light fury in his eyes.
“Careful, now. You’re gonna make an enemy of me doin’ things like that,” he said.
A body of flame shot out of his fire wings and at Fujinaka. It started as a small fireball and expanded into a net of fire when it reached her.
“Be a good girl and stay there till this is over.”
Fujinaka, frightened, was unable to resist as the dome-shaped net trapped her.
“Fujinaka!” Karamori shouted.
“Sorry, kid. This ain’t the place for people who don’t know how to fight,” Pyrovault said. But just then, the dome of flames turned to black smoke.
“I think you will find we are more than qualified.”
A voice sounded from the cloud of smoke. It was clearer and calmer than Fujinaka’s.
The smoke cleared, revealing a single girl. She was standing where Fujinaka had been a moment before, her blond shoulder-length hair fluttering in the wind of the deathly flames. She had bound red string around her fingers and was holding it before her eyes.
It was Archive, wearing an expression of perfect composure.
“You haven’t died yet?” Pyrovault said as he jumped to avoid a slash from Karamori. He remained floating in the air and looked at her in astonishment.
“Incorrect. I died just as fate determined. By way of being consumed by Untitled.”
The Archive was a book that detailed the fate of a single girl. Naturally, it was written with words. There was no reason Untitled couldn’t eat it. The Archive’s every word had been transcribed into Untitled, a book that shared the same material and author.
When Untitled consumed the red book’s existence, Archive died. But her existence took up residence within the new book.
“Huh. So you tricked fate. Impressive,” Pyrovault said.
“I did not do it alone. All I could do was plan and make small moves within the fate that was decided for me. It is Mr. Karamori, who believed in me and came this far, and Ms. Fujinaka, who put her unique ability to use in this harrowing situation, who made it a reality,” Archive said.
With a high-pitched sound like ringing glass—ting—Archive glowed and transformed into Fujinaka. Fear slightly colored her expression, but she returned Pyrovault’s look with unwavering resolve.
Fujinaka had acted without thinking. When she returned to Karamori after leaving the storehouse, she saw him about to kill Archive. Overtaken by the desire to prevent him from killing a friend, she opened Untitled and ordered it to consume The Archive.
Luckily, her knee-jerk reaction ended up being the right thing to do. But she still felt like she had to take responsibility for what she had done.
Fujinaka briefly glanced toward the edge of the workshop to see Asahi Fujinaka lying face down in a pool of his own blood. She wanted to drop everything and rush to him, but she had to focus on the imminent threat. She wiped cold sweat from her face, her lips pursed tightly.
Pyrovault smirked.
“Heh, I’m impressed… Let’s see how you handle this!”
He swung an arm, throwing fireballs at her that were much faster and smaller than the one that turned into a cage. They didn’t get far before they were all swept away by what felt like a strong gust of wind but was actually Shin Karamori and Tyrfing. The young man bore innumerable injuries, but his fighting spirit still burned bright.
He stood beside Fujinaka.
“Are you okay?!” he asked.
“Y-yeah!”
A ting sounded as Fujinaka transformed into Archive.
“Archive!” Karamori said.
“I know. That invention cannot be allowed to exist in this world. Let’s destroy it. Together,” Archive said, her words conveying real intent. No one chose those words for her; she said them of her own will.
Karamori found himself smiling.
“You bet!”
“Let’s show him what we are capable of as a team.”
Pyrovault acted first. He shot multiple fireballs out of his coat—
—which were all flattened to the width of paper with a crunch.
That was Archive’s doing. From her fixed point of view, the fireballs were two-dimensional, and she used her ability to make that a reality. She quickly formed her string into another shape and towering stone pillars rose from the floor. They rushed at Pyrovault.
“Tsk.”
The bald man clicked his tongue and shattered the pillars with his fire wings as they approached. A figure rode a pillar approaching him from behind, having dashed atop it to use as a platform. It was Shin Karamori. He jumped off and slashed at the floating Pyrovault’s back, intending to cut off his fire wings.
But when Karamori sliced through the fire wings and was about to slash Pyrovault, STOP appeared on the back of his coat…and failed to stop the sword. The letters were ripped away by Untitled as soon as they appeared; Archive had switched back to Fujinaka.
Pyrovault tried to turn around in the air, face screwed up with effort, but he was too slow and Karamori’s full-strength swing sliced his back. Blood spattered, but the wound was shallow. Pyrovault then grinned and, with his back still to Karamori, made his fire wings blow up in the young man’s face.
He descended to the floor and looked up at the midair explosion. He saw Karamori uninjured and surrounded by a transparent barrier. Fujinaka had switched to Archive, who was twisting her string.
“Heh. Not bad,” Pyrovault said. His wide grin remained plastered on his face, but his eyes took on a relentless ferocity.
A net of text flew at him, and he transformed his fire sword into a wall of fire and blocked it. Karamori then spun around from behind him and swung Tyrfing.
“You’ll have to do better than that!” Pyrovault shouted.
The bald man stomped hard on the floor. The impact shattered the concrete and dark needle-like objects burst out of the cracks.
“Grk…” Karamori grunted as a few needles he was too slow to dodge shallowly stabbed him in the stomach.
That was a Distortionist attack that Pyrovault had performed a few hours ago with an animal skull. At that time, he needed to smash the skull into the ground to activate it, but now, he could do it with a single stomp of his feet. The cracks also spread further than before and spawned more needles, which suggested that he enhanced his physical strength with the distortions of other vanits.
Pyrovault backed up, pulled a jellylike substance with an eerie luster from his coat, and threw it.