“You ain’t showin’ it, but an enchantment that nullifies magic can’t come cheap, eh? How much you wanna bet it’s tankin’ your Mind as we speak?”
“Lyra, you mean…?”
“Yep. All we gotta do is keep up the assault, and sooner or later, she’s gonna get Mind Down.”
“So it all comes down to who can last longer? Well, that’s nice and simple!” exclaimed Alize. “That’s one more path to victory confirmed!”
The battle had been wearing on for some time now, and it stood to reason that Alfia’s Mind consumption far outclassed that of the girls.
“You hate noise so much, you’re prepared to pay whatever it takes to keep the walls of your silent paradise intact…” muttered Lyu. “That is your weakness!”
Alfia finally parted her lips to speak.
“Correct,” she said. “As painful as it is to admit, that Level Two prum has outwitted me for a second time.”
Alfia had let Lyra slip through her fingers when she’d confronted the witch alongside Kaguya in the streets of Orario. If that had not happened, the prum would not be here to expose the witch’s scheme now. A humiliating turn of events for the all-powerful Level 7 but cause for congratulation as well.
“There is more to you than meets the eye, prum, and there is more to ability than strength, skill, and strategy. I would do well to remember that.”
“Gee, a big, scary Level Seven tryin’ to butter me up? I think I’m gonna wet myself.”
After a lighthearted chuckle, Lyra fixed Alfia with a glare.
“So, whatcha wanna do, queenie? We can keep doin’ this until one of us gives up the ghost, or you can drop your enchantment and finally face that noise you’re so scared of.”
This, too, was strategy. Of course, Lyra wanted to taunt the witch into removing her armor and offering even a sliver of vulnerability, but if Alfia didn’t take the bait, that was fine as well. That would only mean sticking to the original plan of wearing her out, only with the added bonus that now there was light at the end of the tunnel. Revealing the Level 7’s trick had granted the girls of Astrea Familia courage and raised their morale—so much so that it hardly mattered whether the odds had really shifted.
However…
“…You all seem to be misapprehending the situation here.”
In truth, Lyra had not come even one step closer to uncovering the truth behind the witch’s silence.
“What I call noise is not your artless cacophony, wretched though it is… It is the hateful tune of my own gospel.”
“What…?”
“You have correctly uncovered the true nature of my Silentium Eden. While it protects me, all forms of magic are automatically nullified.”
Alfia put a hand to her chest and spoke in an unsettlingly soft tone.
“That includes magic originating from within. Do you understand what that means?”
She raised her head and explained.
“While it cannot nullify it completely, this enchantment drastically reduces the power of my own magic.”
The moment it dawned on them what the witch was saying, Lyra, Alize, Lyu—all the girls of Astrea Familia—paled in shock.
“My silence is no armor,” Alfia declared. “It is a double-edged sword. A seal upon all hateful noise, including my own.”
That was the one point that Lyra had failed to realize. Of course, it was perhaps the most important one of all.
Alize couldn’t speak. Wait, but that means…
Lyra shivered in fear. All those crazy attacks she’s been peltin’ us with…
Lyu felt the despair creep up her limbs like frostbite. That’s her weakened state?! She hasn’t even been using her full power?!
“Listen now, and listen well,” Alfia spoke. “For this is the noise that gives me such grief.”
A sound that was just barely audible rang out, and the invisible shroud covering Alfia’s body flickered, like a mirage. The next moment, tremendous blasts of magic billowed out from her.
“She undid the protection?!” exclaimed Lyu.
“This gale!” Lyra yelled. “It’s all the magical energy that was being kept inside!”
A terrible thought came over Alize, and she instinctively screamed, “Get back, everyone! Get away from her!”
But then the witch spoke in a cruel voice.
“It’s too late,” she said. Breaking her veil of silence, she lifted one arm in the girls’ direction.
“Gospel: Satanas Verion.”
First came her usual ultrashort chant, and the true name of destruction followed. For a moment, the world was robbed of sound, and then came the gospel.
“““!!!”””
It was destructive and deafening. The soft timbre of a ringing bell concealed a magical scream. The followers of justice didn’t even have a chance to raise their voices before a wave of sound engulfed them, dragging them into a vortex of destruction.
“Wha—?!”
Kaguya clapped her hands over her ears and leaped away as a dust-filled gale hit her like a tidal wave. The whole floor shook. For a moment, even Delphyne’s cries couldn’t be heard. A flood of sound waves hit their eardrums, and the ground tremored like an earthquake.
After being tossed repeatedly this way and that, Kaguya finally climbed to her feet and looked up…finding nothing but a fan-shaped zone of death.
“Captain…? Lyra…? Leon…?!”
There was no answer to her frenzied cries save Vito’s laughter.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Is there no limit to their power?! Glutton and Silence both!”
Even as the blast waves washed over him, he laughed like a broken man.
“There can be no future for Orario while those fallen heroes stand with us!”
Soon, the dust cleared, revealing that Alfia was the only one still standing. The followers of justice were strewn across the shattered ground, or lying among fragments of broken crystals, like so many tattered rags.
The witch gazed at what she had wrought with a sorrowful look in her eye.
“All my power can do—all it has ever done—is take.”