“Future…? Dreams…?”
Wreathed in a magical light, the bell of Silence tolled, and a battle began to unfold. A short distance away, Vito watched over the girls make their promises with a look of utter shock.
“I don’t understand. How can such cheap rhetoric empower them? How can they face the might and despair of Silence?”
It wasn’t their words that surprised him; Vito was no stranger by now to the pretty white lies of justice. But the conqueror was unassailable, and no amount of hot air could change that.
Vito knew as much firsthand. He still remembered his reaction to being stripped bare by Zald. Pure terror. Like meeting a being from another dimension. A man against whom any and all resistance was a futile endeavor.
And yet, Astrea Familia had found strength in those pretty white lies. They faced the witch without any fear in their hearts.
What sorcery made such things possible? What justice?
At that moment there came a hysterical laughter. Not from the man’s own lips, but those of the girl standing beside him.
“What is so funny?” he asked, turning to Kaguya.
“Oh, nothing,” the girl replied, wiping her eyes. “It’s just…I knew that girl was stupid, but not this stupid. Even for an elf, she’s remarkably stubborn.”
A gentle smile appeared on her lips, as though she’d found something precious she had been missing for a long time.
“Look at her, defect. Look at that idiot. Look at that elf.”
Vito followed Kaguya’s gaze to Lyu, fighting wildly with an elven sword in one hand and the weapon of her departed friend in the other. The trails of her blades shimmered like starlight.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
Normally, Vito would have denied it reflexively, but he was so entranced that he couldn’t respond.
“Isn’t it blinding? The faith of a moron who believes in hope. Someone who strives for perfection, who admits their mistakes, and who looks ever forward.”
Failing to put in the effort would bring you nothing. Ignoring your flaws was a mistake.
Anyone could ignorantly believe in hope. Similarly, anyone could give up on the future.
But to take steps in the direction of that hope, and to aim for that future; that was something truly special. To Kaguya, that was surely where true justice lay.
“That is what we must fight for. That is what Adi wished to pass on. That is the justice we must carry!”
At that moment, her smile was that of the gentle elder sister, looking out for her sibling in her own, clumsy way.
“Justice will go on. A lovely phrase, don’t you agree? It means even my own sordid past is worth preserving,” she said.
But Vito refused to accept it. “Those words are nothing but a comforting lie!” he yelled. “If justice is so important, then what about me?!” He sneered in a futile attempt to conceal his self-loathing. “I am the incarnation of the world’s imperfections! There is no future for me! No hope I can cling to, nor justice to pass on!”
“No justice to pass on? That’s because you never listened to one.”
“Hrk!!”
Kaguya’s sharp gaze cut the man’s rant to ribbons.
“You decided you didn’t need to; you knew what justice was. You were all alone, and nobody could ever understand you, and it just wasn’t fair. You gave yourself over to madness and cruelty, and disguised it as anger. How could you ever pass that on?”
Vito was dumbstruck, but Kaguya’s cutting words did not stop there.
“You incorrigible fool. You’re nothing but a bloodthirsty beast, hiding behind tragic tales, blind to the paradox that lays at your core. Truly defective.”
“Grrh!!”
Vito had no response. He couldn’t argue back with logic, but neither could he surrender to violence and mayhem. The word defective, that Vito had once welcomed, now seemed like a curse he could not escape.
“No matter what you say, we will preserve them. The ideas we’ve been given. The justice we’ve inherited.”
Kaguya returned her trusty sword, Higanbana, to its sheath.
“We will prove to you…that there are things that will long outlive us!”
“Hrk…?!”
“They will sing our heroic tales forever! Not because of a fixation on the past, but to strive for the future!”
When she closed her eyes, she saw the girl who once stood in twilight. And she saw the nameless few who fought and died this day.
With their thoughts occupying her mind, she allowed just a sliver of her blade to peek out, preparing to cut down whatever lay in her path.
Vito couldn’t keep up. “Heroic tales? That is the hope you bring against despair? What absolute nonsense! I won’t accept it! That’s ridiculous!”
He screamed and cried like he was throwing a tantrum. It was all he could do to avoid admitting the truth and breaking down completely.
“I must kill! I must destroy! It’s the only way to make the world right again! Your ‘justice’ is nothing but fabricated lies! You’re a fool to believe it!!”
“Enough.”
Kaguya silenced him with a single word.
“I will put an end, here and now, to your ridiculous delusions. With my own tainted justice—the art of my accursed Gojouno line.”
The Far Eastern girl shifted her foot, aligning her body side-on while lowering her posture. There was no mistaking what kind of technique she was preparing.
Vito took a few steps backward in fright, before planting his feet, steeling his nerve, and launching himself at her with a mad scream.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhh!!”
With no way out of his harrowing realization, the man resorted to the only thing that would bring him solace—plunging his knife through Kaguya’s heart.
However, Kaguya’s gaze was firm.
“Begone, twisted brute. Ill-omened flower of death.”
She spoke her ultrashort chant, and her sword flew from its sheath.
“Iai Strike: Five Lights!”
All of a sudden, Vito’s world shrunk. Five crimson streaks, the same red as the spider lily, trapped him like the bars of a cage.
“Rgh…!”
Vito saw her, in five positions at once. In front, to either side, behind, and finally, above. Her impossible bladework had sealed his fate.
The arts that Kaguya so despised were a fusion of magic enhancement and pure swordplay.
Her former house, the Gojouno clan, sat in the shadows of the Imperial Court. They handled arrests and executions, but also murder, assassination, and seduction—anything the higher-ups wanted dealt with discreetly. And sometime in the early days of the Age of Gods, this clan discovered a peculiarity in their bloodline: the transmission of certain skills and spells.
Just like how elves possessed a common seed that allowed similar skills to manifest, so, too, did the pure blood of the Gojouno line permit the mass creation of assassins, all with identical abilities.
Identical skills. Identical spells. The same horrifying training regimen enforced upon all members of the clan. Bred to be replaceable, and imbued with the founder’s abilities, honed to perfection over a thousand years of history.
That clan’s highest art was this: a paired skill and spell, each bearing the name Five Lights.
The spell was an exceedingly simple one that merely conjured five magical slashes at whatever angle the user wished. It required the caster to possess an ungodly sword skill to elevate it and achieve something greater: an inescapable coffin of blades.
Vito dodged the first slash by a hair’s breadth. With the knife in his hand, he parried the second on his right. He sacrificed his left arm, allowing the third blade to slice it off, while the fourth carved a gash into his back.
“Gaaaaaaaaaghhh!!”
After that, his luck ran out. The fifth and final blade descended on his neck, slicing into his shoulder, and was about to reach his heart when it disappeared. For what reason he could not fathom, but the girl had dispelled her magic at the very last second.
But such mercy was not enough to save Vito’s life. Perhaps it was not mercy at all. All around him, his own blood drops were hanging in the air like a flurry of cluster amaryllis—the crimson color Vito admired most, rendered only to him as a cold, inhuman gray.
“This is the end, defect. Lie there until you perish.”
Her repugnant, despicable flower. Kaguya had grown used to its sight by now, but it disgusted her nonetheless. She returned her sword to its sheath, then turned her back on the fallen Vito.
“Captain! Leon! I’m on my way!”
Her destination was, of course, her loyal friends, still locked in battle with the Silent Witch. She left, clutching the wounds she had suffered.
“…Not…yet…! This…can’t be over…yet…!”
The man she left behind burned with hate; hate for the world and everything in it. He clung stubbornly to life, fighting to stem the waters of life flowing out of him.
“I need to… I need to…!”
Meanwhile, from his vantage point far away, a single god looked down on his follower in silence, his face devoid of emotion.