Yukinari stepped forward and focused his concentration. Perhaps the effects of the Blood Rose were wearing off, because other than a moment’s hesitation in a corner of his heart, the transformation went smoothly. With every step he took, the light covered more and more of him, enveloping his body. From his toes to his knees. From his knees to his waist. From his waist to his chest, and then to his head, the blue steel armor covered him, until finally a line ran across his back and wings with feathers like crystal appeared. The heat produced by physical reconstitution radiated from him in a haze.
The Bluesteel Blasphemer.
Nightmare of the Harris Church, protector of Friedland.
A superhuman capable of bringing down even the gods.
“Is this the famous ‘Blue Angel’?”
“Yeah. I’ll be able to use my full power this way.”
By enclosing himself in a sort of “mold,” Yukinari could focus all his spiritual power on physical reconstitution without having to worry about retaining his own form. The armor also provided a boost to his defense in hand-to-hand combat and would help him resist the Blood Rose.
He should have assumed this form to begin with. Even if it meant meeting his sister in an inhuman form—he should have ignored his qualms and fought with everything he had.
I assume Hatsune can do the same thing, though...
So he had no time to waste. Yukinari dropped to one knee, planting his right hand on the ground.
Physical reconstitution. He was creating something he had already made once, so it was easy.
Hatsune looked startled.
Yukinari plunged his fingers into the earth, seeking sediment with which to build before withdrawing the completed object and setting it at his feet. It was long and thick—an anti-armor rocket. He had used one to defeat the statue of the guardian saint that Arlen’s unit had brought.
Hatsune was capable of healing herself. Yukinari had no equivalent to the Blood Rose—so his only option was to extinguish her in a single fell swoop. This was not the sort of weapon one would normally use against an individual opponent, but against an angel who could continually heal herself so long as she had spiritual power remaining, there was no such thing as overkill.
“Okay, Hatsune, get r—”
“Yuki? Sweetheart?” Hatsune, still smiling, was looking at him in mild puzzlement from the tree. Her whole body began to exude a bluish-white light. All of it. Chances were that she, like Yukinari, was abandoning her human form in search of something better to fight with.
But...
“You know... This body. It was created in order to defeat you, my dear Yuki. So the True Church of Harris showed me a number of different weapons. There were no guns, but there really was quite a range. They showed me how they were built, too.”
The light spread to tree she was sitting on. No—more than that. Even the earth around its roots was caught up in a vortex of the light of transmutation, gathering around Hatsune. This was no simple physical reconstitution. She must be—
“Hatsune...!”
The earth itself gave a great roar. Hatsune’s act of reconstitution spared not even the sky in its lust for material. Yukinari quickly tried to fire the rocket he had created, but the earth blocked his vision, and the whirling air kept him from taking careful aim.
The world turned gray. He could see a bizarre silhouette looming behind the curtain of dust.
Yukinari reeled. The storm ceased as suddenly as it had started. And then...
“I’m ready now, my dear Yuki.”
It was no longer Hatsune who was speaking to him. It was something in a humanoid shape with metal skin. As far as it went, that made it similar to Yukinari’s Bluesteel Blasphemer form. But Hatsune’s transformation went beyond mere armor.
She had changed her entire body. She was five—no, maybe six meters tall. Perhaps it was all the earth she had consumed in this transformation that accounted for the crater more than ten meters in diameter that surrounded her. The metal giant stood at the bottom of it.
“A guardian saint statue...?!”
Or rather, a variant of one—an evolution. The basic design was much the same as the statues; the biggest change was from the chest upward. It didn’t have the statues’ normal head, but rather a profusion of steel pipes folding into a ball, at the center of which was Hatsune’s face. The appearance was as if the giant had swallowed her.
No, wait... This is...
It might have been made of metal, but it looked very much like an erdgod or demigod. One that had grown exponentially in size. Hatsune was presumably controlling it as the core.
Hatsune’s face began to sink into the giant, replaced by yet more armor. But as she disappeared, she said:
“Now, my dear Yuki, let’s continue.”
“Hrgh...!” Yukinari didn’t wait another second before firing his rocket. But the metal giant dodged with an agility out of all proportion to its size. In fact, it reached out its hand and pressed the cannon against its palm.
There was a great crunching of steel on steel as the front half of the barrel crumpled. It was a disposable weapon good for only one shot, but Hatsune didn’t know that; she wanted to make sure he couldn’t use it again.
“Whoa!” Yukinari tossed the cannon aside and scrambled backward, trying to escape the giant’s hand as it grabbed at him. The palm, several times larger than a human being, could practically have passed for heavy machinery by itself. Just to be grabbed by it would have been enough to crush a normal human. Even in his Bluesteel Blasphemer form, he wasn’t sure he could withstand it.
There was a roar of splitting air as the massive hand closed on nothing. Yukinari tried to put more distance between himself and his opponent, but the giant pursued him with remarkable speed. Yukinari danced through the air, but he was unable to evade the huge hand.
In a flash, he produced gunpowder on his palm. He faced the incoming appendage with his right hand outstretched, using his left to keep the gunpowder in place. The moment the metal hand touched him, he detonated it.