——The six-colored light that had pierced through heaven and earth slowly unraveled and faded away.
The sky, which had faded to ash-white and forgotten its original color, gradually regained its hues. Before long, the blue firmament seemed to remember why it had ever been called blue, beginning to clear faintly.
"———"
Before that sight, Roswaal watched as tears streamed from the eyes of Ezzo beside him.
Whether they were tears of joy or of frustration, it was a sight that moved one to the core regardless. Even though it took the two of them, Roswaal and Ezzo had accomplished a feat that would be etched into the history of magic for the first time.
Extreme magical control divided between four and two colors, a flawless spell construction that permitted not a single gap, and an ultimate harmony that would have failed with even the slightest misalignment — this had surpassed anything ever achieved under the Dragon Calendar.
A super magic that would not have been possible without both Roswaal's refinement and Ezzo's pursuit.
However—— "Someday, I will construct this spell formula on my own — alone!"
Roswaal smiled at the sight of Ezzo, who declared such a thing even as tears flowed endlessly from his eyes.
Neither exasperation nor irony. —Yes, that was exactly what a magician was.
In magic, image is everything. The belief that anything you can imagine is possible — that is magic.
"That's right, isn't it, Professor?"
Saying that, Roswaal's body tilted, and he began to collapse toward the ground. Ezzo reflexively reached out to catch him, but sadly, he — who had been more heavily drained — fell first.
And so, as Roswaal toppled, he threatened to crush Ezzo beneath him — when, "We made it. I bring good news."
That cold, composed voice and a powerful arm saved both Roswaal's fall and Ezzo from being crushed beneath him — all at the last moment.
"———"
Looking up at
The all-purpose retainer who had flown off into the distant sky during the battle, then returned after shattering a star. He had repositioned his monocle at some point and retracted the black horns from his head, returning to his usual state. However, he hadn't quite managed to restore his typical impeccable grooming — his clothes were disheveled, a rare sight.
"Even so, to be almost completely unscathed except for your butler uniform — that's just unfair, being a dragon person."
"Master, with all due disrespect, allow me to correct you. It's not because I'm a dragon person. It's because I am the Divine Dragon's dragon person that I am exceptional. I declare it."
"…You really are just showing off, aren't you? Because of your vessel, I ended up like this, you know?"
"Don't point at me! My lower back — no, my whole body is drained, that's all! I simply can't stand!"
Ezzo, still face-down from his forward collapse, made that defiant retort without being able to rise. Clind shrugged apologetically at the sight, but truly — what a wonderful personality.
"You've changed. You used to be more of the transcendent, aloof type — the sort expected of an elder species."
"If that's the case, allow me to return those very same words to you. Returned. —Weren't you, Master, supposed to be clever and cunning, playing the part of an ordinary magician? I ask for confirmation."
Clind narrowed his eyes behind his monocle, having hit Roswaal's thoughts exactly.
That had indeed been the plan. And yet, Roswaal had been unable to do it.
Unable to do it, he had risen to his feet and done something reckless beyond imagination.
But that was —, "I just realized something, that's all. …That all these days, I wasn't walking alone."
"———"
At Roswaal's answer, Clind fell silent. So did Ezzo, for some reason.
"I suppose that's a little too obvious to say, isn't it?"
He had a long history with Clind, of course, and with Ezzo — during the super magic activation just moments ago, their consciousness had nearly merged completely.
The emotions and prayers that Roswaal had harbored in that moment could not have been hidden from either of them.
"Now that you mention it, I'm used to that sort of consciousness-merging phenomenon, so I understand, but how are you unscathed, Ezzo? Normally your mind would break, you know?"
"Don't say such terrifying things so casually! …Probably because of the benefit of the Book of the Dead."
"The Book of the Dead from the
"That's right. While on standby at the Watchtower, I read more than ten volumes of the Book of the Dead. What was required for that was learning the art of emptying one's mind…"
"I see. So this is what a magician is. I understand."
He felt that Clind had arrived at something of an insulting conclusion, but he wouldn't press the matter here. Roswaal didn't particularly find what Ezzo had done strange.
In any case, what needed priority now was —, "Master, we have indeed fulfilled the role we were entrusted with. Completed. However…"
"Yes, I'm well awaaare."
Taking over Clind's words mid-sentence, Roswaal quietly exhaled and gazed into the distance. Clind, and Ezzo still on the ground, both looked the same direction — beyond the horizon, past its vanishing point.
It was the rocky wasteland, its environment utterly transformed by the battle with the Divine Dragon, and beyond that — the final destination of Aldebaran's group —, "— Mogerode Crater."
What flashed through Roswaal's mind was the final confrontation between magic and dragon that had split heaven and earth.
The Divine Dragon had watched the dragon person who ascended to the sky to intercept the falling star, then weighed two choices: eliminate the two magicians crafting their super magic, or fulfill its own role.
There was not a shred of arrogance — not a single fragment of certainty that it could win — in the Divine Dragon at that moment.
And so the Dragon, following the conviction of the persona dwelling within its dragon shell, chose one of the two options — and with the breath it released, aimed at the enormous hole in the distant earth, far from the battlefield.
Why Aldebaran's group had targeted that location was unknown.
But the Divine Dragon's action could hardly be unrelated to their purpose. Having accepted even its own destruction, the Divine Dragon had prioritized the breath strike at the hole.
The meaning of that would surely be proven from here on.
The rest was —, "— Whether what you've cultivated can overpower the opposition, Subaru-kun."
△▼△▼△▼△ ——Irregular.
That was the role expected of her, the duty she had to fulfill, and that was how
That to stop Al — who had broken through every obstacle standing in his way using the off-the-chart authority called "Time Regression" — what was needed was an irregular.
*'Sure, that helmeted bastard's authority is terrifying stuff. As far as I know, I've rarely encountered power that defies reason to that degree. —But no matter how powerful it is, the one wielding it is nothing more than human.'* *'Keep piling up the unforeseen on him, forcing that helmeted bastard to keep using his authority. There's a limit to how far he can regress. Overwhelm him, overwhelm him, overwhelm him until he breaks.'* *'When you've worn away every last bit of his margin, that helmeted bastard will make a mistake he can't take back. —That's how you seize a chance of victory against him.'* That was Old Man
Against Old Man Rom's proposal, those well-versed in tactics like
What should be hammered into Al was the unexpected — something that would make him groan. And if what was required was a battle of attrition, then Rem was no pushover.
After all —, "— I've seen that man up close."
That was Rem's greatest advantage — knowing what would provide the best chance of winning.
If it could be called fortunate, Rem had been forgotten by virtually everyone until recently. During the time she had no "memories," her encounters with Al in the Empire had been few and far between. Even before that, their connections through the Royal Selection were even more sparse.
But precisely because of that — that was precisely why Rem's actions had the potential to catch him off guard.
However—— "Yaaahh!!"
Roaring, pouring everything into it, Rem swung her arm — and the iron ball released a beat later soared through the sky with tremendous force.
The spiked iron ball flew in a straight, spinning arc toward its target: the red-haired shinobi, Yae Tensen. On the stage of the Aguzat Gorge — five thousand meters tall — the battle that had continued through the descent had now transitioned to the next level against this astonishing shinobi.
A contest of strength on an ice disc conjured in midair, using it as their footing.
Even that had been the result of Rem and
It wasn't only Al's side that had been hit with irregulars. Theirs had as well.
"———"
A heavy, sharp blow whistled past, killing the wind as it went.
The spiked iron mass — no matter what cutting edge it boasted, it would not be deflected by something that was merely a bundle of thin strings. It was launched at full force at Yae, the irregular herself.
"——!"
Yae swallowed a small sound in her throat at the approaching threat and abandoned counterattack, executing a sideways roll. The iron ball passed right beside her as it rolled across the ice disc, hurtling empty through the air — when, "Hah!"
A sharp kiai, almost carefree in tone, met the iron ball with a strike.
It was the crisp sound of Emilia — who had been on the other side of Yae — kicking the incoming iron ball away with her ice-booted foot. Emilia's long, slender leg swung around, and the iron ball was sent ricocheting by brute force, chasing after Yae's retreating slender frame.
The iron ball closed in mercilessly on Yae's flank — and, "Not quite."
Just as she said that, the ice disc that Yae's rolling hand had touched was peeled away from the surface, covering her like a shield of steel wire — a shield to catch the iron ball that had pursued her.
Of course, it was a thin shield to fully stop the blow. It cracked in half a second, shattered in the next half, the spike punched through in the half after that, and it was blown clean through in exactly one second.
But for a swift shinobi, that one second was enough to make her next move.
"No way!?"
Emilia couldn't help but cry out. But Rem felt the same way.
In both their fields of vision, Yae — who had escaped the follow-up attack behind her makeshift ice shield — had leaped lightly, placing her bare feet on the fully extended morning star's chain, and was running along its entire length.
Emilia was stunned by the acrobatics and sense of balance; Rem, additionally, by the footwork that gave no sense of weight whatsoever despite running along a chain. But the surprises kept coming. —Synchronized with the arm movements of Yae's swing, ice and stone swords rained down from overhead toward the two of them.
"This is — !"
Twenty seconds ago, weapons of ice and stone that Emilia and Al had created mid-battle and left suspended in the air. Yae had pulled them down with her steel threads stretched to the sky, repurposing them as a deadly rain.
"That's because I didn't clean up properly!"
"You didn't clean up either, Emilia!"
"Having a sloppy master sure makes things tough for both of us, doesn't it?"
Self-reproach, support, and provocation overlapped as Rem and Emilia were driven to deal with the falling blades. Emilia knocked them away with twin ice swords in both hands, but Rem was the one in real trouble.
Her right hand was occupied by the morning star — and that morning star was currently being used as Yae's foothold, so she couldn't carelessly pull it back. She had no choice but to defend with just her empty left hand.
"There's no t—"
Before she could finish "time," bracing for impact — someone shoved Rem aside, and that someone was pierced through the chest by a falling stone sword.
"———"
Rem's eyes went wide at the sacrifice. And when she saw who had done it, her astonishment deepened further — the heroic figure, even with a sword through its chest, still gave Rem a bold thumbs-up before toppling over —, "— Subaru-kun!"
Rem screamed without thinking. What lay pierced through the chest was an ice copy of
"Huh? Did Emilia-sama just…? Was that—?"
"Yes. —Because Subaru isn't alone, you know!"
Just after responding to Yae's grimace, six figures burst forth from behind Emilia. All of them were ice figures with the same appearance as the Natsuki Subaru who had just fallen.
Each of them moved with individual personality and purpose — as if they possessed their own will — pulling the weapons that had been deflected and embedded in the ice disc, and charging together at Yae as she ran along the chain. If even one of those ice fingertips could reach her, it would be the foothold to corner the nimble shinobi — , "Unfortunately, group battles happen to be my specialty."
In an instant, twenty steel threads leaped out and bound the charging ice copies of Natsuki Subaru. The wire wound around their necks, torsos, and limbs, tightening viciously — and all six were brutally torn apart.
"Subaru — !!"
"Subaru-kun !!"
Rem and Emilia's screams overlaid each other at the pitiful remains of the ice Natsuki Subaru.
Beyond the scattering fragments of the ice figure, Yae continued running along the chain, heading toward Rem's position. In an instant's judgment, Rem released the morning star's handle, robbing Yae of her foothold's support. The shinobi would surely kick at thin air in the next moment — and Rem twisted her body to deliver a devastating back kick — , "I really don't want to take a demon's kick head-on, though."
Yae spoke as she pulled her knee free, adjusting to the chain's sag — Rem caught it from the corner of her eye.
Yae, having dropped her center of gravity, maintained her balance in midair without faltering. The lethal thread released from her fingertips lassoed toward Rem's neck in a ring — decapitation or strangulation — but at the very last moment, the chain beneath Yae's feet pulled taut, overturning her prediction.
"What—"
Yae's eyes went wide, and she instinctively kicked off the chain to leap free. It was a masterful reflex. But what her eyes fixed on was not Rem — it was what had pulled the morning star chain in Rem's place.
It was the ice copy of Natsuki Subaru — the one that had been the first to fall after taking the stone sword through its chest. —Even after falling, the ice copy of Natsuki Subaru had refused to give up the fight, and it had saved Rem.
This person really was always doing reckless things for someone else —, "It's not even the real one!"
"Even so — it is!"
The full force of Rem's back kick sank straight into the center of Yae's chest.
△▼△▼△▼△ ——Irregular.
That to prevent this was the role expected of her, the duty she had to fulfill, and that was how Yae considered herself.
Within Yae, the assessment of Al as a capricious and terrifying monster did not change. —But what would exhaust him, what would impose a burden on him — that was the irregular piled upon irregular.
*'Well, sure? I've fought opponents stronger than me more times than I can count and nearly died each time, haven't I? The world's nothing but monsters — makes you sick, honestly. —But in the end, I'm still the one standing, and there's no such thing as an unkillable man.'* *'When both sides are at full strength, there's a gap that just can't be bridged. So we chip away at that gap bit by bit — that's the crafty little trick we've polished with blood and sweat.'* *'Take away the opponent's full strength, and you'll find your opening to cut down someone above your weight class. —That's the bloody survival art we've mastered.'* That was the advice of the "Wicked Elder," the village chief who had drilled Yae in the way of the shinobi and their techniques.
Yae had no objection to the village chief's thinking. But opportunities to test it had been surprisingly rare. Most opponents were weaker than Yae. She didn't even lose in head-on fights.
The first opponent she had ever lost to was Al, and Yae's existence had been twisted ever since. She wanted this person — whom the mere presence of made her entire body tremble with terror — to vanish as quickly as possible. And for that, she had to ensure Al's wish, his desire, was fulfilled.
And so —, "— I don't want anyone who can corner that man to come near him."
Twisted, bent, warped. Yae was self-aware of that.
But there was nothing to be done. Yae liked bitter things and couldn't stand sweet ones. That was her nature, a fate she couldn't change.
If she had been born as this kind of person, then she would live as this kind of person.
Yae had her own ideal for how her relationship with Al should end.
To achieve that, removing the irregular — that was Yae's particular brand of twisted.
However—— "——!"
Struck head-on by the kicks of Rem and the horned girl she had called, Yae suppressed the groan rising from deep within her strained body, dispersing the shock through her limbs with body control. A shinobi's technique that could relay intent even to individual muscles and organs — a survival art.
But even that couldn't leave her completely unscathed. The tips of her fingers and toes were going numb.
She hadn't underestimated the demon race's power. But for Yae, who could roughly gauge an opponent's strength from their stance and limb movements alone, the demon clan's racial trait — absorbing mana from the surroundings through their horns to explosively enhance physical ability — had exceeded her expectations.
On top of that —, "Emilia-sama's improvisation is really too much of a pain~"
Yae muttered while masking her bitterness, keeping composure on her face.
In reality, the attack had done real damage, but she couldn't let that show. A shinobi didn't let the opponent read their condition. And if she did let them read it, that information would be bait.
With the footwork Yae had shown, both Rem and Emilia — who had witnessed it — would assume Yae had taken substantial damage. If she still looked composed despite that, any normal fighter would hesitate to follow up.
"Emilia-sama!"
"Yes! Let's go!"
But that only worked if the opponent was a proper combatant with a conventional mind.
After landing a blow, neither Emilia nor Rem gave any thought to Yae's composed expression — two shadows charged straight at the spot where she'd been sent flying.
Reckless? No. They were desperate, they were giving it everything. And that was exactly what made them hardest to deal with right now.
"Then I'll fight dirty — with every trick I've got!"
To counter, Yae spread her toes wide on both feet, combining them with her hands to manipulate twenty steel threads.
The swords embedded in the ice disc — blades of ice and stone — were caught by wire and made to dance, meeting the pursuing Rem and Emilia head-on.
Synchronized with her nimble fingerwork, the wind-slicing whirling swords and the invisible, silent steel threads became a dual assault of heavy and light, and the clashing wind that introduced errors in response raged across the ice.
If you tracked the swords by eye, the steel threads would bind your limbs and strip you of combat ability. Al had ordered her not to kill — but she could sever a finger or two, or all four limbs, and still fulfill that requirement as long as they lived. With that thought, Yae unleashed her killing intent.
But — , "Aaaahhhh!!"
"Ha! Yah! Hah!"
Rem's roar and Emilia's fierce cry deflected every one of Yae's attacks.
Rem handled the swords while Emilia blocked the steel threads — a combination play. Rem had wound the morning star's chain short around her arm, fashioning an improvised gauntlet, while Emilia refashioned her twin swords into a massive halberd. Without exchanging a single word, their rock-solid combination blocked everything.
"How did you…"
Blocking the visible swords was manageable with ability alone. But blocking the invisible steel threads required a reason.
Questioning that reason, Yae noticed a faint whitish haze in her peripheral vision — and realized.
Beyond the fall from extreme altitude and the vast ice surface, there was a cold that cut deeper into the skin.
"— Frost mist."
Tiny ice crystals drifted through her field of vision, catching the light along the paths of the steel threads, revealing their trajectories.
Yae felt a quiet admiration for how Emilia had seen through the invisible threads, and the sense that made it possible. And then — for the possibility that things were about to get worse.
"— Icicle Line."
In an instant, the chant she spun out caused the atmosphere to begin screaming in a shrill voice.
The ice particles that composed the frost mist linked with adjacent particles, and the freezing cold that painted the world white bared its fangs more violently. Its first victim was the steel thread, inferior in mass.
The advantages of steel wire — its lightness and thinness — were crushed in a world of frost. Wind could be sliced by wire, but a blizzard could not. —And so, the decision came immediately.
Yae kissed the ring on her finger. In that instant, flame traveled along the steel threads, detonating into an inferno on the ice.
The heat wave that pushed back even the freezing gale forced her to abandon the advantage of "invisibility" that steel threads provided — but in return, it cloaked the threads in power that wouldn't yield to the cold, even within the frost mist.
"Allow me to escort you in a dance of flame!"
Whirling the flame-wreathed steel threads, she unleashed scorching thread strikes while performing the dance of "Crimson Sakura." Against that brilliant blaze illuminating the gorge, two figures — no, seven ice figures were added to make nine shadows — charged in with crisp ice and snow trailing behind them.
"I'll take you up on that!"
"Sorry if I step on you!"
On the ice, Emilia — twin ice swords in hand — slid into Yae's range of the inferno vortex. Wearing ice boots with blades on the soles, she glided across the ice surface, tracing a circular arc to match Yae's fire dance — launching a sinuous, curving attack that was deceptively sharp.
Keeping pace with Emilia's rhythm-shifting assault, Rem's choice — charging alongside the ice figures in a scrum formation — was straightforward and overwhelming — , "Aaaahhhh—!!"
With a beast-like war cry, Rem raised both empty hands and rained down blows with her white fists.
A storm of punches — and the word was apt — descended in a torrent. Yae twisted, ducked, leaned back, straddled, and wove through the barrage, brushing past them in her flowing dance.
"As long as it's bare fists, I can keep dodging forever."
Even accounting for the demon race's physicality, as long as limbs extended from the torso, the flow of force through the muscles was clear, and Yae's eyes never missed it. Rem's power as a demon was formidable, but it didn't exceed Yae's reaction speed the way a "Sword Demon" might.
By that logic, the seven ice figures that attacked between Rem and Emilia's strikes — with movements that defied anatomical logic — were the true irregular that exceeded Yae's expectations.
At this rate, as she'd declared, Yae could keep fighting the two of them indefinitely — , "— No."
Yae, who had been about to take the easy path, pulled herself up short.
This battlefield had been chosen by the opponent. If she kept playing their game, she'd be right in the palm of their hand. To prevent the irregular, she herself had to become the irregular against them.
The immediate priority was — , "This foothold — "
The ice disc that Emilia and Rem had created together, cutting off Yae and Al from each other. Exposed to the wind, its transparency had degraded, turning milky white — through it, Al's figure was hazy.
Yae judged that the footing was compromised, so she deflected Rem's barrage, ducked Emilia's attack from behind, and used one of the ice figures lunging for a tackle as a springboard to vault into the air. Then she shot steel threads in every direction from the disc, and poured her full strength into a complete bodily rotation.
The result — , "I'm changing the situation. Was this in your calculations as well?"
Synchronized with Yae's maximum exertion, the battlefield of the ice disc underwent a transformation — the disc began to spin like a top, and immense centrifugal force bore down on everyone on the ice.
The battle had transitioned to its next stage.
△▼△▼△▼△ ——"Irregular."
That was what the unexpected meant, and Emilia steeled herself with the belief that stacking those unexpected moments was now their weapon.
When ambushed by surprise, even Emilia couldn't immediately shift to her next move or thought. The same was true of Al. He must have planned this whole thing out carefully, but he couldn't read everything inside Emilia and the others' heads. That was the entire point of the "irregular."
*'When Emilia's in a pinch, she always tries to brute-force her way through everything, right? And only when that doesn't work does she start worrying about what to do… But stopping there isn't like Emilia, and I don't think it suits her.'* *'My darling girl has the power to blow any problem away with a bang. So don't just try once — keep going, little by little!'* *'Don't worry, Emilia. When the time comes, your body will naturally tell you what you need. You're my pride and joy, carrying the strongest genes there are.'*
Lately, the words she always recalled for strength were Subaru's. But now that she knew Subaru was in danger, the one who had encouraged her first was still Puck's teaching.
The attack on Al that she'd launched together with Rem had been intercepted by Yae, who had barged in — with only about thirty seconds left before they passed two more marks carved into the cliff face and reached the underground.
She wanted to panic. But she couldn't let it overwhelm her. It wasn't exactly her forte, but she needed to push this feeling onto Al and the others.
To stop Al — no, to properly talk with Al this time.
Because — , "— Priscilla would never want something like this."
Emilia knew that saying this aloud was cruel toward Al.
Even now, the mere thought of Priscilla — the ache in her chest and the stinging at the corners of her eyes when she spoke her name — Emilia felt that same sensation. She wanted to make Al pour out those feelings.
Before, Emilia had been saved by Al once. Setting that aside, Emilia wanted to be of help to Al. Not only because they shared the same pain — but as a deeper, instinctive feeling, Emilia wanted to save him.
And so — , "— Subaru!"
With ferocious force, heat-laden wind spiraled outward, and the ice disc with Yae at its center began to spin.
The disc whirled like a plate spinner, accelerating violently. Unable to withstand the escalating centrifugal force, the ice soldiers modeled after Subaru were flung off one after another.
They were either helplessly launched from the disc or — the unlucky ones — smashed against the gorge's rock walls and shattered. But before that happened, Emilia remembered: they had grabbed her hand to stop her from stumbling when her feet were nearly swept away by the rotation.
"Rem —"
Gliding across the spinning disc in ice skates, Emilia scanned the chaos for Rem — who should have been trapped in the same situation. Surely she hadn't been flung off like the ice soldiers — anxiety surged — when, before Emilia's eyes, a thunderous explosion and an exceptionally large burst of flame erupted.
The collision occurred at the center of the disc. Rem and Yae had clashed there, and flame billowed upward.
Rem had caught the iron ball she'd launched skyward earlier and swung it down. Yae used the tension of her bundled threads to deftly redirect the downward strike. As a result, Rem's wide swing was halted, and Yae's clawed toes stabbed straight into the opening.
"Kuh!"
A pained grunt escaped Rem as she was deflected, tumbling across the ice surface toward the outer edge.
With the disc's rotation and Yae's leg power, there was no way to arrest Rem's sliding body. "I have to do something!" — Emilia thought about reaching for her, when — , "— Eyes off me, please."
The instant Emilia kicked at the ice, Yae's diversionary attack shot in as if to pin her there.
A strike from a stone dragon sword caught in burning wire, followed by a second wave of thread strikes — a two-stage assault demanding wide-area evasion on two levels. Emilia considered her options — and then discarded deliberation entirely, recalling the words of Subaru and Puck, those two sources of strength.
Trust instinct over thought — Emilia flew toward where Rem was heading. —Literally, she unfurled her wings and flew to Rem.
"Wh—"
Yae's eyes went wide, fixed on the sight. It was the first time she'd shown a completely unguarded expression.
But unfortunately, at that moment, Emilia had no attention to spare for it. She flew straight, swooping down to Rem, caught her before she could be flung off the disc, and soared upward.
—There, on Emilia's back, were wings sculpted from ice.
"Th-Thank you, Emilia-sama… these wings?"
"Subaru drew them for me before. He said they're what an angel has — wings on its back. He mentioned it once in a while, so I tried it, and it worked!"
Answering Rem's question, Emilia's cheeks softened.
Of course, these were just ice replicas shaped to look like wings. They couldn't flap like a real bird's, so gliding on the wind was the best they could manage.
And even that only worked in this extraordinary circumstance — a very rare success story for magic. Subaru would probably be thrilled to see it, but for that, she'd need him to fall five thousand meters alongside her too.
For that reason — , "Emilia-sama! Let's fight back!"
"Right!"
Cradled in Emilia's arms, Rem's courageous voice made Emilia nod in return.
Fight back — the word sparked the same thought in her mind. Trusting instinctively that it matched Rem's, Emilia dropped altitude straight toward the ice disc with Rem in tow.
There, she released the wings, and the two — Emilia and Rem — spun in midair. Simultaneously, both of their heels drove down, forcing the horizontally spinning ice disc into a vertical rotation.
"———"
In retaliation for the disc being spun horizontally, they spun it vertically.
A simple counter, but one that neither could have achieved alone. It was an outlandish reversal that must have stunned Yae, who remained on the disc. The footing flipped up-down, then flipped back, then flipped again, then righted itself, flipped again, righted again — spinning them every which way.
On top of that — , "The horizontal rotation is still going too!"
The result was a disc spinning freely in every direction — a battlefield with completely randomized trajectories. It was just like the "attraction" that Subaru and Garfiel had built in the training ground behind the Roswaal mansion — wobbling and unstable.
And precisely because she thought of it that way, Emilia could run across the disc's "attraction."
"Yah! Hah! And— there!"
Changing the direction of the crushing forces every second at full intensity, Emilia used only the sensation of her soles to adapt, bouncing off the surface to launch herself forward.
She was relieved to keep her footing. On the other hand, she worried about Rem.
"There's no need for concern!"
Rem answered as she drove the iron ball into the ice disc, used it as a pivot, and hauled herself toward the center by the chain. Her momentum wasn't as great as Emilia's, but in terms of reliability, it was far more stable.
If anything, Emilia was the one who needed to avoid slipping.
"That girl is…"
On the chaotic ice disc — above or below, fighting not to be thrown off — Emilia scanned for Yae, flickering her violet eyes.
There. Yae was still at the dead center of the disc — the point where centrifugal force was weakest in both horizontal and vertical axes. Even so, she'd still be swung around — and as Emilia extended her stored momentum, she noticed.
"———"
Yae was crouching on the disc with her knees folded, not being flung by the rotation.
The reason was obvious — she had bored a hole through the center of the ice disc with her steel wire, creating a safe zone unaffected by the rotation, and had been waiting for them all along.
—In that instant, flame-wreathed wire was bundled together, and a superheated silver flash blazed across her field of vision.
△▼△▼△▼△ ——A burning, crimson silver flash.
If anyone had observed it from above — if that observer possessed knowledge of the technique — they would have recognized the strike Yae Tensen unleashed as iaijutsu executed with steel wire.
That something so thin, formless, and consistent could take the form of iai — no one would have imagined it.
Moreover, steel wire techniques were, even across the long, long history of the shinobi, a phantom art that only a handful of geniuses could even begin to master, let alone learn the fundamentals of.
And that the "Crimson Sakura," possessing the greatest shinobi talent in history, had refined this killing technique to even greater heights — not a soul, including Aldebaran, knew this fact.
And so — , "———"
—And so, that Rem blocked the flame silver flash could only be described as a miracle.
"— Priscilla."
The name her lips wove was that of the woman who had stood Rem up, who had given her one of the reasons to make it this far.
And who, right at this moment, had left behind the sign that allowed Rem to claw her way back to life.
She had felt it. The unmistakable killing intent from Yae — the kind that hadn't leaked through even once until now.
Human emotion resides in mana.
Those with keen senses for mana can easily read others' feelings. This may be the reason spirits can vaguely perceive another's thoughts.
And Rem, who absorbed the surrounding mana through her horn due to her demon transformation, was perceiving sensations with a sharpness several times greater than normal — sensations she couldn't usually detect.
"Until now—"
She hadn't been able to feel it. —No, she had been feeling it, but couldn't recognize it.
There were various reasons for this newfound awareness. Having reclaimed herself, carrying the sense of mission to save Subaru. But the biggest reason was different.
It was the influence of the days spent with Priscilla in the capital city of
In the time they'd shared — never very long — Priscilla had repeatedly thrown enigma-like words at Rem, giving her catalysts to confront herself more deeply. Back then, Rem had tried to imitate Priscilla's words on a surface level, driven by inadequate healing magic and frustration at her own uselessness.
"Now… I think I've finally begun to understand, even if just a little."
She couldn't say that she understood all the answers to those words even now. She thought of it as a lifetime's worth of homework. And she could never check those answers again.
That was sad. Lonely. Her chest ached.
"— I want to talk with you right now. Priscilla."
She murmured, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, Rem's talent as a member of the demon race awakened.
What she could keenly perceive was a faint hostility, killing intent, and will to attack woven into the mana — at the place where those intentions seemed to take on visible color, Rem placed her iron ball with absolute precision.
The flame silver flash that had come to bisect both her and Emilia — she swung her morning star in a single stroke to intercept it at the perfect position, rewriting the lethal strike into a blocked one.
The shrill ring of steel meeting steel echoed through the gorge. A fierce shock traveled back into her hand, but Rem's counterstrike met Yae's flash head-on and knocked it aside.
"———"
Yae inhaled sharply at the fact. But even so, she crouched lower, setting up for the next move.
The furious storm of countless silver flashes — she could sense that the killing intent coalescing before they were released was about to hurtle through the air. Rem took the initiative, driving her iron ball along that very line — chain, magic, and all.
Several instants, moments that seemed to overlap almost simultaneously — Yae's attack was blocked by Rem.
Ah — a breath escaped in her heart.
Ah, so this was the view that a true member of the demon race had witnessed. —A fragment of the realm that Ram had reached from birth — Rem had finally caught the edge of it, more than ten years late.
"— Rem!!"
Emilia called out to Rem, who continued to battle through the storm of burning wire while making the iron ball dance.
The urgency in her voice wasn't gratitude for being protected — it was a warning of a change in the situation, and not a good one.
Catching Emilia in her peripheral vision, she saw her — one long leg stretched out, pressed against the ice disc, her eyes scanning through the spinning world — , "Al's gone! He's nowhere!"
"— !"
At Emilia's desperate voice, Rem finally registered that Al had vanished from her field of vision.
He had been below the disc — a position where he could only observe Rem and Yae's fight. But with the rotation clearing the visual obstructions, he was nowhere in the empty sky.
Where — and immediately, Rem realized with a jolt. She squinted toward the distant sky.
Falling through the Aguzat Gorge, beyond the long, deep fissure splitting the earth — from far below where Rem and the others descended, a receding shadow was visible.
It was — like Emilia before — a figure with wings on its back. Stone wings catching the wind, gliding at tremendous speed. It was Al.
In that instant, what flashed through Rem's mind was the strike she and Emilia had launched against the ice disc. It had spun the platform vertically and transitioned their fight with Yae to the next level — but that had been exploited.
"At the exact moment Emilia and I kicked the platform — "
Al had been clinging to the back of the disc, using the force of their kick to generate the momentum to propel himself into the distant sky in a single burst.
"———"
If Al escaped like this, the entire strategy would collapse.
They had to pile on the irregulars, wear down his margin, and reach the trump card they needed to throw at him. That couldn't happen — and in that instant, a decision was made. Rem's and Emilia's eyes crossed.
"— Rem."
And though it shouldn't have been audible, Emilia's will reached Rem through the mana.
The demon's horn didn't only sense the faintest hints of hostility. By also taking in unshakable trust and expectation, it granted Rem limitless strength. In truth, more than the mana it absorbed, it was shouldering those feelings that became her true source of power.
And so, having truly been given a share of that strength — , "— I'm heading out!"
"Do come back safely!!"
Rem raised her fist and brought it crashing down with everything she had — the blow accelerated the disc's vertical rotation, and Emilia, who had been clinging to the ice, was launched into the sky in a single burst.
Wrapped in the glitter of ice and unfurling ice wings on her back once more, Emilia caught the wind and momentum — chasing after Al as he flew into the distance, soaring, soaring across the sky of the Aguzat Gorge.
And so, leaving Al's pursuit to the soaring Emilia — , "— You won't be followed."
"That's my line~"
—Past yet another mark on the Aguzat Gorge's rock walls, twenty seconds remained until they reached the underground.
The two maids left on the falling ice disc — Rem and Yae — faced each other. And the final, violent clash between demon and shinobi — between the "Hero's Attendant" and "Crimson Sakura" — had begun.