Just as more pale-blue sparks began to appear at Thor’s fingertips, Kamijou jumped and grabbed his right fist. The steel-plate-cutting blade vanished before it could be fully formed. Using the instant where Thor’s attention was on his hand, Kamijou hit the sorcerer in the gut with the hardest knee he could manage. “Gh…gah!!!” “I stay quiet and listen, and you start barking! What I’m saying is I hate it when someone I don’t even know brandishes something I did, not on anyone’s orders, but on my own!!!” As Thor bent around the knee in his gut, Kamijou flung back his head, then slammed his forehead into the boy’s face. There was a dull crack. “I’ve stopped fights. I’ve saved crying girls. That’s enough for me, but everyone else wants a piece of the pie, too, and they change the results!!! If one plus one equaled two, nobody would have any problems. So how does it always end up being negative five or negative ten?! Is it even possible to rescue Fräulein Kreutune?! Will she actually be saved?! Tell me that!!!” Seeing the sorcerer dazed, Kamijou let go of Thor’s right fist, then clenched his own right hand and went straight for the bridge of the boy’s nose. But Thor blocked that with his left arm. At the same time, he tried to sweep Kamijou’s legs, but Kamijou stomped on Thor’s foot first. “I saved them! And I can’t stand it anymore!!! I hate how people keep changing things to make me feel like I made them suffer instead!!! So let me prepare before I actually do something!!! Why can’t you get that through your thick skull?!” “Now you’ve said it…,” murmured Thor. Both his hands shot up, grabbing Kamijou’s collar. He lifted Kamijou straight up off the ground; Kamijou’s feet dangled above the street. “So you won’t actually do anything? Because you don’t think it’s grand or worthwhile? Because you don’t know them? Because you’ve never met them? Because it’s not for you to get involved with? …That’s not it, is it, Touma Kamijou? You just said the answer yourself. Do you realize what stage of the process we’re in, and you’re already worrying, you moron?!” Kamijou’s back crashed into the floor. Without exaggeration, his breathing stopped dead for a moment. Thor then sent another two or three fists raining down on his face. Nevertheless, Kamijou twisted, barely escaping another punch—he’d lost count of which one this was. After that, it was a brawl. In general, it seemed like each boy was trying to straddle the other to pin him down. But even an incredibly simple goal like that grew hazy partway through. They punched, they got punched in returned, and they punched again. The process repeated until complex thought began to be stripped away from them. It wasn’t clear what engendered this, but one way or another, Kamijou and Thor both stopped punching each other suddenly. One third of the right half of Kamijou’s vision was blurred. He didn’t know how it was for Thor. But if Thor was a regular member of Gremlin, then he could have easily used all kinds of spells that would have blown this entire fast-food joint to smithereens. He hadn’t; he had held back on purpose. There had been a reason why. Breathing raggedly, Thor asked Kamijou again, “Do you want to save her, then?” “Only if it’s true that she’s actually suffering,” answered Kamijou, ignoring the crowd of onlookers watching from a distance. “But if you’re trying to use me for your own ends like Leivinia Birdway or Kagun Kihara, then you’d better be prepared. Because I’ll still save Fräulein Kreutune—even if it means I have to bring your whole plan crashing down.” After hearing that, Thor smiled thinly. “Fine. Do as you please.” “?” “I’ll be heading out tonight. You make your own choice and do your best to save her. We might end up helping each other or fighting. I don’t care either way, as long as it’s for her sake.” Thor put his hand down on the table that was still standing and used his blue-white sparks to write something on a paper napkin. After quickly showing the letters he burned into it to Kamijou, he tossed it to the side. Starting from the center of the message, the napkin ignited, and the flame expanded until it was gone and no information remained. Thor turned his back and spoke quietly. “That’s where I’ll be. Whether we decide to team up or face off, be sure to make good use of what I told you.”
✦ ✦ ✦
INTERLUDE TWO Long ago, in western Europe, executions were the foremost method of mass entertainment. After all, pastimes like basketball and video games were not widespread in this era. Books existed, but most people weren’t able to read or write—or, needless to say, listen to music or watch plays. The vast majority of people who comprised “the masses” had little to do with such luxuries. In those days, executions were public affairs held in town squares. They served as a spectacle for the people, one that would rattle onlookers whether they wanted to be rattled or not. For better or worse, the events were a major source of stimulation in people’s otherwise mundane lives, despite executioners being traditionally shunned, at least publicly. The masses didn’t only watch as “it” happened, either. Sometimes, they would actively participate. Let’s give one such example. Public humiliation was a form of punishment. Compared to chopping off a person’s head with an ax or crushing their limbs with giant gear-shaped objects, public humiliation had a relatively high survival rate. It was simple: Just place the person to be punished in the middle of a public square, bind their arms and legs, and leave them for a while. The punishment was designed to shame the offender, and for greater crimes, the guilty party might have their clothes torn or be made to wear a pig mask over their face. At first, public humiliation might not seem like it involved direct violence. And it was true—all the executioner did was bind the person and leave them there. But it was also true there was a tacit understanding at play: No matter what the masses who watched decided to do, the executioner would not intervene. Previously friendly neighbors, starved for excitement, might throw stones at the helpless criminal, or beat them with sticks, or dump waste from their houses over them. People were said to delight in such punishment because they believed it was righteous. One last thing topped it off. Criminal investigations in those days were shoddy, and you didn’t need to unravel the mysteries of the infamous witch hunts to understand that. And people naturally knew how much of a sham they were. In public, they would pretend like they could never disobey the will of the authorities, when in reality, they wanted to make their neighbors out to be bad people even when they weren’t. It’s said they drew a dark kind of pleasure from this. During those times, it was all normal. During those times, crimes and legends were established after the fact. Someone who bumped into a wealthy man’s shoulder could be branded an extraordinary thief and beheaded; a wife who tried to criticize her husband for adultery could be found to have committed a violent crime while possessed by the devil; someone could still blink their eyes after having their head lopped off their body, and the blood splattered on the ground might have given birth to an odd plant in the shape of a woman. Such stories were disseminated without a care to the point where even public government records couldn’t necessarily be trusted. Perhaps that was the reason. The reason why the legend surrounding the woman had been buried among all the rest. Fräulein Kreutune. A woman said to have been subjected to 308 divine ordeals, which all took the form of archetypal confessions via torture, a major element of the witch hunts. But even after they threw her into the flames for an extended time and made her hold scorching rocks in both hands… Even after they bound her arms and legs and dropped her into a spring… Even after they suspended her at the tip of a tower, exposing her to lightning strikes… Even after they locked her in a room without food or water for over a month… …not only did she never die, but she didn’t even blink. At the time, no one could even come up with myths to explain her true nature or the tricks she’d used. The general idea behind trials by ordeal was the people in power would assign an ordeal to the suspect. If the suspect was guilty, then God would abandon them, and they would be hurt. If they were innocent, then God would spare them, and they wouldn’t be hurt. Eventually, people decided testing God like that was bad, and the system gradually evolved into torturing a person into confessing. But at the very least, during Fräulein Kreutune’s life, trials by ordeal had been effective. In other words. Ironically, in an age of such twisted law, her tormentors were forced to draw a single conclusion. Fräulein Kreutune hadn’t ever been hurt. Therefore, she was kindhearted and pure. She was just a normal human being.