It was only a slight difference, but Armelina of course knew that delayed information could produce devastating results.
“Sorry. I’ll listen to your criticism later. Tell me what’s happening!”
“Chief!!”
She left through the Gate to Sign Out. When she returned to a corner of the city, she was a beautiful woman in glasses with her black hair tied back and wearing a tight skirt suit with the tie removed and the first few buttons undone.
This was not a specially cleared area in an expensive part of the city like the Detached Magic Palace in Roppongi or the Ushigashira Shrine in Akasaka. Nor was it a secret facility deep below the Metropolitan Police Department or the National Police Agency. After all, she and her coworkers did not work in public security or foreign affairs. They were an external sector that performed the investigation that could not be done through the official channels. They were officially known as a private detective agency staffed by retired police officers and JSDF officers.
She was below a rundown elevated railroad in Shinjuku.
She was inside a cold storage truck stopped there. Its refrigeration was of course turned off and it was stuffed full of steel racks, flat screen monitors, and computers with their internal power sources bypassed. A slight space was left cleared in the center. There was nothing physically there, but it was a crystallization of cutting-edge technology that qualified as a national secret. That was the fruit of their research and they could not let it reach even their allied nations. It was still in development, but it was a mobile Gate that was not reliant on a specific location.
As the incident with the Religious Society showed, moving between Earth and Grandnir introduced a large informational risk. Grandnir had been known as spy heaven ever since the Cold War when the Americans and the Soviets were pointing nuclear missiles at each other. That risk could be somewhat reduced by monitoring the Gates on the Earth side, but the existence of mobile Gates would entirely overturn that assumption.
The other workers waiting in the truck began to speak.
“The situation could not be worse. You can call it unprecedented if you want. I imagine you already know since you performed an emergency unplanned Sign Out, but…something has come out.”
“So the information I got in Grandnir was right.”
The woman in the tight suit just about bit her thumbnail out of habit, but then she remembered she was in front of her subordinates.
Even so, she could not restrain her panic and irritation.
She was not entirely unconnected to this incident. While she had not caused it, she had helped lay out the fuse leading to the bomb.
She looked to one of the many flat screen monitors.
They showed the scene outside using the security cameras set up around the city. Black smoke was rising from multi-tenant buildings in Tokyo and innocent residents were fleeing along the sidewalk and roads alike.
“Despite the panic, order has been maintained. It is highly unlikely that this will lead to any moral hazards such as looting or rioting.”
“That isn’t what I was worried about.”
Yes, that was a concern, but it was secondary.
The real problem lay elsewhere.
“Gruagach…”
The tight skirt woman muttered the name of the woman who had been at the center of the Religious Society.
That alone would be completely normal. Just as this glasses woman went by the name of Armelina, everyone had a second identity when exploring the Labyrinth. There was nothing odd about the woman named Gruagach walking around Tokyo.
But the woman’s eyes narrowed sharply as she viewed the many monitors lining the wall.
“So your appearance really is the same as in Grandnir.”
People’s appearance changed between the 2 worlds because of the Percentage-style Magic that formed their clothing.
In other words, they could not maintain their Grandnir appearance when no longer in an environment that allowed for Magic. Or it should have meant that. But that was not what surprised the tight skirt woman the most. Another fact was so shocking that even that paled in comparison.
And that other fact was the primary problem.
“The Succubus…”
She had once worn a white habit.
But now that demon unnaturally embraced Gruagach from behind, pressed her cheek against the woman, and smiled thinly.
“So my information was right! She really has appeared here! But how!?”
What was going on?
The answer was found a bit earlier and in another world.
It began in the inn town when the scars of destruction were still fresh.
Since most of the humans were unconscious, Boo Boo had visited despite normally being feared. He and Armelina were strong, so they moved the rubble to search for anyone buried alive. Filinion used a recovery potion on anyone they found.
Beatrice did not have much to do there, but she had another important job: tie up the unconscious members of the Religious Society and confiscate their Shining Weapons.
“You have no idea what you have done,” hoarsely said a woman in mourning clothes and a veil. “You let the witch escape. You assisted her. So whatever she might do now, what happens next is your responsibility. Are you prepared to go down in history as one of those who destroyed the world?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m asking if you are prepared. You will come to regret choosing to act based on your own spoiled emotions.”
She thought this was only the ravings of a lunatic.
She decided to ignore the woman and forget it all.
But when she looked up again, a slight – ever so slight – question occurred to her.
Yes.
“Where did the Nun go?”
Fairy Queen Sutriona stabbed something into the nutrient-rich garden next to Boo Boo’s leaf house near a mountain river.
“Hmph.”
“Ghah!!”
It was Ileana, the plant Break News and the greatest Mandragora who wore a dress made of grape leaves and vines. Technically, it was just one of her.
“Out of respect for what Boo Boo and the others accomplished, I’ll end this here. Heal your wounds there, perverted carrot.”
“Oh, what’s this? Now that I look at it, this land isn’t bad. To think that cursed Iberian Orc has a talent for preparing soil. It might not look nice, but I appreciate his love for the flowers. It’s so much nicer than some insects I could mention.”
“You can’t have him.”
“He doesn’t belong to you. Ahhhhh! Th-this is perrrrrrfect…”
Ileana cried out like she was soaking up to the shoulders in a hot spring that soothed ones weariness.
Her face grew flushed as she said more.
“But you truly are a troublesome insect. Thanks to your interference, the Religious Society has retreated. Now I won’t get my reward.”
“I’m sure it had to do with women, so I really don’t care.”
“You understand, don’t you?” Ileana giggled. “All I ask for a job is a virgin. But I don’t take her and devour her. I essentially call dibs to ensure no one else can touch her. I enjoy freeing them from the many bonds humans place on each other.
In this case, that was the Religious Society.
When someone said they could only live one way, she would show them there were other options. She would show them that they could get by just fine once they took that first step. That was how Ileana found her purpose in life.
Sutriona understood all that, but she still spat out the same thing.
“I don’t care. When you kill someone and save someone, are you cancelling out the death? That’s only your interpretation. Don’t be so naïve, mercenary. Don’t play the predator if you aren’t prepared to be eaten. At the very least, you could have followed a path of nonviolence and yet not lost anything at all, making you the envy of every pacifist.”
“Perhaps so. But at least let me wallow in regret. Gruagach was a truly unfortunate girl. The Religious Society alone would have been bad enough, but even her mental escape route was dyed in evil.”
“?”
By the time Sutriona tilted her head, a clear change had already begun.
The Nun in a white habit was gone.
When Boo Boo, Filinion, and Armelina heard that, they discovered another concern.
“One is missing,” said Beatrice. “I remember how many enemies I defeated and one of those women in mourning clothes is missing.”
“So the Nun and one of the Religious Society who were pursuing her are missing?”
“Squeal. Could this be really bad?”
“Wait, wait, wait. Don’t tell me she was taken away after all that.”
They had already been searching for anyone buried in the rubble, so they split up and resumed the search.
As Boo Boo moved the rubble out of the way, they eventually came to the ruins of the church.
“What is this?”
The roof was gone, most of the walls had collapsed, and nearly the entire building was only rubble, but a small area had survived.
It had likely been a tiny storage space hidden inside the pipe organ by the wall. It had broken apart, the lock was now useless, and its contents were exposed to Boo Boo.
There were several pieces of parchment inside.
Boo Boo did not know if they were valuable, so he showed them to Beatrice who looked shocked and began reading through them.
“It’s a lot like the notes used by a phone scam group… They follow these arrows to know what to say depending on what the other person says. It’s a flowchart for controlling someone’s heart.”
“Boo?”
Boo Boo did not seem to get it, but Beatrice decided it would be best for him if she did not explain it in more detail. Someone who had mastered a guide like this would not need it anymore. They would only keep it around if they had a plain form with fields to be filled in. They would investigate an individual and write down what they found to more effectively grasp their heart.
“But this is pretty complex and detailed. They must have had a specific target in mind from pretty early on. Boo Boo, you said you found this in the church? That would mean the Nun was manipulating some specific person.”
But who?
After some thought, she ran into an assumption they had made earlier.
“It’s possible the Religious Society woman didn’t abduct the Nun.”
“Beatrice, are you saying the Nun took the Religious Society woman away?”
The Holy Swordswoman thought for a moment.
She used her fire illusion Magic to draw out some frames and red lines and she felt faint at the great change she saw.
The overall structure was falling apart. It was being remade. What if the Nun and the Religious Society had been secretly connected even as they caused this entire incident? Had the Nun known about the attack in advance? No, had she intentionally made herself the source of conflict to pull the trigger? That would mean she had planned for the Religious Society to bring in Ileana and to greatly damage the inn town.
But if so, what for?
What about the current situation helped her in any way?
“…”
“Beatrice?”
“No, it can’t be…”
A thought started to rise in the back of her mind, but she rejected it herself.
“She can’t. She just can’t. Even if it’s left wide open, it’s simply impossible…”
At that very moment, Beatrice turned toward Boo Boo with a look of utter disbelief in her eyes. Her eyes were opened as wide as they would go and the shock that raced through them was just like running into a field of unimaginable despair.
“What is it, Beatrice? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, it isn’t that…”
Technically, Beatrice was not looking at Boo Boo.
She was looking at what hung from his waist.
That giant Shining Weapon could be mistaken for a log or a steel beam.
And…
“Yes. That’s right. If a great number of Iberian Orc souls can be sealed inside a Shining Weapon…”
“?”
“Humans can pass through the Gates, but Nonhumans can’t. That’s an undeniable fact, but if those Nonhumans can change form, that assumption falls apart…”
Out of all the myriad possibilities, why had her thoughts jumped to that one?
There were two reasons.
First, it led to the greatest risk if accomplished.
Second, it explained why the Succubus would use the Religious Society woman to take out everyone in the inn town.
“If the Succubus was planning something this big, someone would have stopped her under normal circumstances. Every human in Grandnir would have dropped whatever they were doing and rushed her. She wouldn’t be able to accomplish her goal if that happened. The Sign Out process takes several minutes, so if we held every Gate, we could strike back while she was defenseless.”
The reality of this theoretical risk gradually grew inside Beatrice.
“But things are different now. The power of a Break News attacked the inn town and most of the humans in Grandnir are unconscious, so she can do anything now! Yes, like a final experiment for sending a demon to Earth!!”
The Holy Swordswoman dug through the pile of rubble some more.
She found plenty of documents and evidence.
Controlling a star student was quite easy.
The purity of their heart would lead them to eliminate any discrepancies between their ideal self and their actual self. It could be anything: looks, academics, athletics, income, job title, behavior, etc. As long as you discovered the source of their insecurities, you could drive them to a state of inextricable dependence.
“Uuh…”
The woman wore bluish-black mourning clothes and a veil.
She had a modest chest and her extremely long and whitish-blonde hair still reached her waist despite being braided and bent into a U shape.
She was known as Gruagach.
She had once been a hound of the Religious Society who was entirely pure and fulfilled her missions like a machine, but once her fall began, it would not stop. The white Succubus clung to her back, wrapped her arms around the woman’s neck, and rubbed her cheek against the woman’s cheek, but the poor woman could only groan.
“I…I really was wrong. I shouldn’t have done this. But…but I… Ahh! I should have immediately cast aside this power!!”
“But you cannot get rid of me now.”
It was like a gentle whisper.
The pure white demon had an angel’s halo and she licked the woman’s cheek with her long tongue as she sweetly whispered into her ear.
She had already revealed her identity and the habit was gone. With the clothes stripped away, her sexy body was only covered by a swimsuit-like garment made from reptilian scales and the thick white snake wrapped around her body like a hagoromo.
Her goat horns and bodylines had also grown larger and fuller. The Succubus intended to influence the earth, but she could not cross the boundary between worlds even if she did seal her soul inside a Shining Weapon. She would be blocked by the boundary between Grandnir and Earth, so she could only influence the other side as if through a thin layer of rubber.
But it did not matter either way.
If you knocked on a wall, it would make a noise. If you heated a glass panel with a burner, the other side could burn you. If you pressed a magnet against the underside of a thin film, you could control the metal nails on the other side. As long as she could influence the other side like that, the demon might as well exist on the other side. Something would stand there in a form that people’s senses would detect.
And the group on the Grandnir side of the thin layer would never be able to capture the demon.
She would become something like a being that pressed against the outer edge of the ever-expanding universe. They would know she existed in the same world, but no one would be able to observe or reach her.
As long as this poor woman named Gruagach acted as the Succubus’s anchor, anyway.
“After all, everyone will be after you now. You need more power than ever. So you have no choice but to follow my plan. If you don’t, you’ll be pecked at from every direction. You’ll be left in an even sorrier state than a sugar cube dropped in front of an anthill. You don’t want to turn out like that, do you?”
“…”
The president had grown beautiful.
She had shined each time she challenged the Labyrinth. The words of envy had echoed through her mind.
“Orrrr will you return to your former self? Would you prefer to be powerless, unable to even walk through the Labyrinth, and just one of the pitiful workers whose name no one remembers?”
“No!! Anything but that! I can’t go back to what I was like back then!!”
Gruagach shook her head half-madly.
It was not that she had no talent.
She was a Summon Hunter. That was a rare Job that let her bind contracts with the Nonhumans on the surface of Grandnir and either fill her blade with their power or directly summon them to fight within the Labyrinth. That Job was on the same level as a Holy Swordswoman, White Witch, or Fighter Priest.
But she had not had anywhere to use that talent.
In exchange for being able to summon any Nonhuman, she could not summon anything without binding a contract first. But strict Gruagach had been very poor at negotiating. And she had lacked the initial power needed to make a Nonhuman bind a contract by force. She had long been trapped in a state that was much like locking her keys in the car.
Once the Succubus had realized that, it had been easy to manipulate her.
She had lent Gruagach the use of a Succubus’s special Skill: Charm. Gruagach had used that Charm to win over and bind contracts with more and more of the Nonhumans in Grandnir.
Yes, by covering her entire body with a light pink oil flavored by multiple herbs and the blood from the Succubus’s wrist. And just as perfume bonded with the oils and moisture of the skin, the unclean blood had mixed in with the sacrifice. And that was one of the powers that would pull at the demon through the thin layer.
“This is just like the illness recovery tours. Even if objects and life forms can’t be directly passed back and forth, the fact that your ailing body was healed will remain back in your world, right?”
Gruagach had quickly risen to the top of the Religious Society’s ranks.
But that had all been based on the Succubus’s assistance.
If the Succubus cut off her Skill, all of the Nonhumans trapped by her Charm would return to their senses. They would abandon their contract and leave Gruagach. If that happened, she would lose her power once more. She would be ruined. Gruagach’s glory was entirely reliant on the Succubus.
She had soared high with that power, but that only increased the shock of the inevitable fall.
That led her fear to grow without end.
“Sob, hic. What are you trying to do?”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“Answer me!! Why have you ruined…absolutely ruined my life!?”
“Because you had talent.”
The Succubus faintly smiled, embraced the woman from behind, and ran her hands along the bodylines that showed through the mourning clothes.
No.
“You had talent for corruption. I mean, a normal person would have been overwhelmed by this point and made a mistake. They would have roused the others’ suspicions, had their identity revealed, and dropped out of the running.”
“Uuh.”
“Buuuut. You managed to deceive them all until now. No one suspected you were wearing something like this under those pretty clothes. This secret looks perfect on you, don’t you think?☆”
“Uuuuhh…!!”
The Succubus moved slowly.
There should have been more than enough time to resist, but Gruagach could not.
The mourning clothes were stripped from the fully tamed woman’s body. So was the veil from her face. That clothing was technically Percentage-type Magic, so it dissolved into the air. And that left…
“My, my. This was originally a full set of armor and a man’s Shining Weapon, but as I gradually made the necessary modifications, the design dramatically changed. Well, this may just be a reflection of my own tastes. It makes it hard for the wearer to go out in public, doesn’t it?”
It was a blue and black set of light armor with something like a swimsuit’s pareo added on. That was not too rare in Grandnir, but it also had something like leather belts binding her body in places.
A red, glowing, and venomous needle was installed on the end of the tail that curved upwards from the back of her hips. Insect legs grasped her hips from behind and two giant pincers with red tips pushed up on her modest chest from below.
Overall, it was reminiscent of a scorpion.
But the most ominous features were the keyholes at the points where the belts intersected. That suggested that the wearer could never remove it of her own free will.
It was a modified Shining Weapon. It ignored its wielder’s will.
If she was wearing that Shining Weapon armor and had the Succubus’s soul sealed inside her thanks to the herbal oil soaked into her soft skin, she would intentionally catch on the barrier between worlds. That would separate the demon from her sacrifice. And it would bring the large-horned Succubus as close as possible to the filter between worlds.
“Now, let us begin. You return through your Gate and my power will bind to your body through the thin layer. That will mean success and give us cause to celebrate.”
“Khahh!?”
The star student had no choice but to fall, but when she tried to put up a futile resistance regardless, her entire body gave a violent jerk.
Just as the long scorpion’s tail rose behind her hips, it mercilessly stabbed into the sacrifice’s back.
It was like a plug and an earphone jack. The armor already had several coin-sized holes, and it stabbed into one of those.
Sparks burst before her eyes.
Her mouth flapped wordlessly, her eyes opened as wide as they could, and she took desperate and deep breaths. None of this changed anything. Just like someone growing accustomed to the heat or the cold, the star student’s mind adapted to this new state.
“Ahn.”
The translucent demon cried out like some kind of joke, but she was not teasing the victim.
She now shared her senses with Gruagach and she was able to enjoy the scorching pain.
“If you want to give up, just tell me. I have an intimate understanding of your suffering. Pleasure and anesthesia are two sides of the same coin, so a little help from a demon can solve this right away.”
“Kh.”
Finally, the tail plug slowly pulled out.
It had not simply been a toxin. As soon as the signal left, the pain receded. She could speak again, but the marionette had to gasp for breath as she asked her question.
“What…uuh…what are you…planning…planning to do on…Earth?”
“Do you know how the only man I ever loved ultimately lost his life?”
Her previous calm had vanished.
All emotion vanished from the Succubus’s voice as she whispered.
“He was assassinated. He was thrown to the bottom of a seldom-visited canyon and his legs were trapped between boulders so he could not approach the Gate and Sign Out. Then his mind and body were both slowly, slowly, slowly worn away.”
Gruagach was trembling now.
This was no comparison to before. What had once been a star student was trembling intensely from the core of the core of the core of her being. She trembled in hopeless fear and regret as if she had thoughtlessly opened Pandora’s Box.
“At the time, it still wasn’t known that objects and life forms other than the data contained in the Shining Weapons could not be directly brought back to your world, so they tried a great many things. They tried swallowing bags of herbs to fill their stomach and intestines, they tried slicing open their arms and legs to fill them with the gears used as currency, and they tried injecting potions into their blood with syringes and IVs. Those methods were proved ineffective by the experimenters’ deaths. Ultimately, they learned that only a few grams was the limit even if they sliced open their body. …Well, it was partially to put a stop to those demonic experiments, but it ultimately comes down to interests. There were simply a lot of people who found it more convenient if only data could be brought back. They were afraid of allowing humankind to step outside the theories proposed by that person you call the Sage.”
What was this demon trying to do?
What was she hoping to do on a planet teeming with humans!?
“Now is the time to sharpen our souls and bring back those evil deeds.”
But there was nothing Gruagach could do.
The heavy lid had already been removed.
The great hole connecting worlds had already been opened.
“My name is Tselika. Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier. As I hold a single corpse in my arms, I shall fulfill my goal even if it means making an enemy of every universal law and crossing the barrier between worlds.”
And now time returns to the present.
The location moves to the Ushigashira Shrine in Akasaka, Tokyo.
“Grandmother!!”
After passing through the Gate to Sign Out, the coke bottle glasses shrine maiden with fluffy blonde hair tied in a long tube shape ignored her own exhaustion and shouted toward the ceiling.
“Do you know what’s going on outside? What happened with that Succubus!?”
“No need to yell. They’re showing it on TV.”
“TV?”
The humans from Earth had always unilaterally passed through the Gates, learned as much Magic as they wanted, and returned without anyone interfering. They had never considered the possibility of the Nonhumans interfering with Earth. That was why society had been able to accept something as extremely irregular as Grandnir.
If that stronghold crumbled, it could easily lead to a worldwide panic.
This was blatantly not something that the mass media should be thoughtlessly reporting on.
“It was a real tragedy that it happened during the day,” explained her “grandmother”. “In other words, while the Diet was in session. It’s a legal issue, but the current system doesn’t allow for a Diet meeting to be canceled even in an emergency.”
The fluffy blonde glasses shrine maiden quickly looked down to her smartphone. The internet was down across the board, but she could still use the full seg broadcast app that picked up the signal directly from the station instead of through a browser. She tuned into a nationally-run station and found a question and answer session being held in a storm of heckling, angry shouting, and camera flashes.
“It seems the JSDF was deployed across the entire city, but was that your decision!? I do not recall a defense deployment request being submitted to those of us in the Diet. Nor was there a vote. So should I take this to mean the JSDF has become your personal army!?”
“As this is a rescue operation and not a defense deployment, everything I have done is perfectly legal under current law.”
The next thing she heard forced the shrine maiden to focus on a definite invasion.
“This is the very first time that a Break News – a paradox brought about by extreme environmental change – has reached our land in this world, so I would like you to think of my decision as the will of all the people of our nation.”
She felt faint.
Her exhaustion likely helped. The core of her body wavered and she collapsed to the tatami mats.
“Grand…mother…”
“It’s just as you’ve heard. I don’t know what she was originally, but now that she’s been confirmed inside the city, her rank has been increased. So whatever she might be, she will apparently be treated like a Break News.”
The shrine maiden checked the other channels and saw all the daytime variety shows and talk shows for housewives had been preempted. Inside a swiftly-prepared broadcast studio, employees scrambled around in the background as a woman announcer read the same script over and over. Now that the information had leaked out from the nationally-run broadcast, the local commercial broadcasts had likely decided any attempt at information control would fail to eliminate the chaos.
“We have just received further information on the Break News. All public transportation in the city has been stopped and the normal roads will also be sequentially shut down to prevent chaos. If you live in the affected area – especially if you cannot evacuate immediately – you should take shelter inside a sturdy building. Sheltering inside a car would only increase the danger, so please shelter inside a building. I repeat…”
(They need to evacuate? Shelter inside a sturdy building? That will remove the people from the streets. But what are they trying to get them away from?)
“Grandmother! Don’t tell me…!!”
It happened just as the shrine maiden yelled up at the ceiling.
The tranquil atmosphere of the Ushigashira Shrine was shredded by a great roar passing by overhead.
The entire large wooden building shook.
The fluffy blonde tearfully covered her ears and realized what was happening even without looking outside.
“Did they send fighters out!?”
“You haven’t seen it yet, but tanks and armored trucks are driving around the streets like they own the place. I have no idea how effective they’ll be, though. A good half of the military is all about appearances. When they have so much destructive power, they can’t just let an invader trample the city underfoot without fighting back.”
The attic voice paused there.
And then she spat out a much lower and more frightening voice than the shrine maiden had ever heard before.
“…They know it’s hopeless, but they’re still going to waste those innocent young lives.”
An out-of-place figure unsteadily appeared from a giant reinforced concrete box in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. It was Gruagach, the woman with long, long blonde hair and an outfit that looked like light armor, a pareo, and leather belts. Her looped braid had unraveled and spread out behind her. The long tail on the back of her hips and the pincers pushing up on her modest breasts provided a scorpion-esque look. And Tselika, the sexy and translucent demon, gently embraced that poor puppet from behind.
The demon technically did not exist on Earth. She could not directly interact with this world, but even while beyond the barrier between worlds, she was bound here by a great power. In the end, that difference mattered little. As long as she continued manipulating Gruagach through that barrier, she could see and touch everything on this side.
Haloed Tselika had not passed through a Gate. In fact, she had turned that idea on its head.
(There had to have been sporadic travel between the worlds before the very first Gate was built. That would explain mysterious disappearances and cryptid sightings. …And that means it isn’t the Gates that connect the worlds. If anything, they’re safety devices that restrict travel. So if I destroy a few of them while the humans are down, they would malfunction and the “mysterious disappearances” would begin anew.)
The barrier between worlds was thin and pliable. It was the Gates that had remade it into something more solid.
Tselika had gone to such great lengths to interfere with this other world, but she was still not satisfied.
(A gray city that reeks of smoke and soot. How boring. Was “he” targeted and killed in another world just to protect people’s control over something like this?)
With that emotion in her heart, she spoke with only wickedness in her voice.
It was not that one side or the other was her true self. This demon could process both conflicting sides without contradiction.
“Hmm. A public shared Gate, huh? Did the Religious Society decide that securing their own Gate would stand out too much for a secret organization?”
Her tone had entirely changed.
She laughed and spoke in her combination of a scale swimsuit and a snake hagoromo.
“It might be a religious one, but your base was a school? So the Religious Society’s elites were nothing but the kids in the student council? I know you can’t rely on people’s appearances in Grandnir, but no one would ever think the fearsome Religious Society was an afterschool adventure. Would they, Miss President?”
School, religious, student council, afterschool, president. Tselika toyed with the contents of the star student’s mind to gather the information she lacked and immediately mocked her for it.
This was why the Summon Hunter had wanted power badly enough to make a deal with a demon.
She was so talented in academics and athletics in her own world, but…no, thus it had damaged her pride something awful when she was branded incompetent for the first time in the other world. Especially when she was treated like a genius by everyone around her and had never experienced any setbacks or defeat.
The president had become beautiful. She had seemed to shine every time she challenged the Labyrinth. The praise had become the norm. And it was all thanks to what she did every time she visited Grandnir: took a special oil made from multiple herbs and Tselika’s blood and rubbed it across every inch of her soft skin for a much crueler transformation than at a beauty salon.
But Gruagach did not resist.
In fact…
“Ha ha…”
She laughed weakly.
Her head tilted limply to the side, her eyes were not focused on reality, and a few tufts of her blonde hair got in her mouth. She only continued to laugh as her face grew so slack that drool dripped freely out.
Tselika frowned and stuck the red plug needle into the star student’s back a few times.
But none of the jacks on the girl’s back produced the desired result.
Her shoulders, hips, and modest chest reflexively jerked irregularly, but it was not quite what the demon wanted.
The girl only laughed eerily flatly with her head tilted limply.
And with no concern for the pain of the plug or the long hair covering her face.
“Ah ha ha, ah ha ah ha ha. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.”
“Hm, maybe my Charm was too powerful when I hijacked her through the armor. Well, as long as she can move her arms and legs. If I don’t control her autonomic nervous system, a variety of things would probably start spilling out.”
She made sure to double-check on something.
Not on Gruagach who was now a puppet, but on the scorpion armor she wore.
When returning to Earth from Grandnir, the Shining Weapon would take the form of a small USB key smaller than a keychain, but Tselika’s armor had been specially modified in Grandnir after being built on Earth. So even when it passed from Earth to Grandnir or vice versa, its power would fill the parts in both worlds. Like a Mobius strip, both sides were the same side, so it manifested itself in its full form on either side.
The star student had too much dopamine in her brain, so the demon took control of her arms and legs to lightly twist her body around.
“Looks like there won’t be a problem using Magic.”
At that very moment, metal could be heard tearing into the asphalt as the intersection 300 meters away was blockaded. Great masses of metal awaited them. Tselika would never have seen a tank before, but she did not seem surprised.
Thanks to the armor and thanks to the blood and herb mixture soaked into her soft skin, the drool-soaked star student’s body and brain were under the demon’s control. The demon could pull out whatever information she needed.
And Tselika had to snicker when she judged her opponent’s specs.
A man sticking out from the top of the tank aimed a heavy machinegun at her and shouted through a loudspeaker.
“Attention Break News! Disarm yourself and surrender before I count to 3! We will only give you this one chance! Waste it for any reason and we will view it as a hostile action and immediately open fire!”
“Is this a joke?” spat out the translucent demon as she pressed up against the poor doll. “I have no interest in pacifism. It means straying from my primary objective, but I am irritated by the way you make a living on a foundation of corpses. I will take that irritation out on you. My name is Tselika! My weapons are the horns on my head and my shields are the wings on my back. If you wish to disarm me, then come tear those from me, human!!”
The man was true to his warning.
Since Tselika had done “something else”, the camouflaged group did not bother counting to three. The line of tanks fired one after another and launched shells at more than 5 times the speed of sound. Anti-personnel canisters scattered more than 2000 bearing balls like fireworks and APFSDSs used infrared to accurately locate their target even within all the dust. Those spears of death opened holes in the target by melting the armor instead of breaking it and they mercilessly bared their fangs against that round, soft flesh.
There should have been nothing recognizable as human left.
“Didn’t I tell you, human?”
The atmosphere was entirely taken away.
While possessed by Tselika through the thin barrier between worlds, blonde Gruagach now stood on top of one of the tanks. She stood back to back with the heavy machinegun soldier. When? How? Before the shells had been fired? After? It was all so baffling that only the hands of the clock continued moving.
“Kh!”
So as not to hit their fellow soldier, the heavy machinegun soldiers sticking up from the tanks on either side pulled out their sidearms and aimed at Tselika’s alluring body.
Nevertheless, the translucent horned demon whispered.
“I asked if this was a joke. All of this, including your reaction here are far too slow.”
“?”
With an explosive noise, something cut by overhead.
It was a domestic stealth fighter from the JASDF passing between the buildings. The weapons bay was open for some reason and it had already launched an extra-large aerial bomb.
It was targeting Tselika in her scaled clothing and thick snake hagoromo and the pilot did not seem to notice anything else that was there.
“Wait…”
One of the soldiers looked up and shouted at the unfairness of it all.
And when he looked down, he saw further absurdity.
Tselika and Gruagach were nowhere to be found.
He could only see the bomb dropping toward them.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait!?”
The bomber in the back seat gave a report while viewing a monitor that had reversed polarity so it would not grow entirely white from the explosive flames
“All bombs hit. Repeat, all bombs hit!”
“This is urban warfare and in the capital of Japan at that. It’d be a major problem if we missed. If we’re sure of that, then let’s get out of here.”
They did not notice they had blown away the ground unit with their bombs.
In fact, they could not see the ground unit. Or anything else besides Tselika.
So after finishing the bombing and beginning to rise to a safe altitude, their reaction upon seeing “that” may not have been surprising.
They saw “that” deep, deep, deep inside the window of a building several hundred meters ahead.
Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier.
And the star student she had hijacked.
However, they should not have been able to see her so deep inside that window as it reflected the sunlight.
“…Target spotted…”
The fighter changed heading and accelerated.
Similar warnings arrived over the radio.
“J-Wolf 02 to J-Wolf 01. We’ve spotted the target too.”
“J-Wolf 03 here. Awaiting instructions.”
“J-Wolf 04, we can target her. Let’s end this.”
The pilot breathed in and out. Several hundred meters was the blink of an eye for a fighter, so he did not hesitate to speak as the building wall spread out before his eyes.
“J-Wolf 01 to all fighters. Change formation from diamond to boomerang. Engage. Begin attack.”
A moment later, 4 spears pierced the building wall and blossomed into large flowers.
“You dumbass! Switch off the monitors!!”
A woman in glasses and a tight skirt shouted while traveling inside a mobile base disguised as a cold storage truck.
As her subordinate was gradually swallowed up by the “effects”, she tightened his tie with one hand to knock him unconscious and she used a lithe leg contained in black panty hose to kick out the power cable and forcibly shut off the machines.
“Bhah!! Pant, pant! Ch-chief, you saved me.”
“You can thank me after taking a psychological test with a counsellor, Inoue. It’s too soon to say whether you’ve really escaped her influence. Tanaka, you watch over him!”
“…What was that?” hesitantly asked the young man.
Everyone silently focused on the woman in a tight skirt. She cleared her throat and answered.
“I don’t know any of the details. There haven’t been any experiments proving that something in the other world can influence ours through the thin barrier between them. But that Break News is a Succubus. That means this must be based on a Charm-style Skill. For example…she might take control of anyone whose heart is taken in by her aura.”
If it was simply something biological like her voice or pheromones, her influence would not reach inside a tank or fighter. But if it had to do with a vague “atmosphere” or “aura”, then she could bind someone’s heart even over the phone or internet. Everyone had experienced that on some level, such as getting excited watching a live soccer match or feeling disgusted by a post on a message board. People’s emotions could be controlled even when the other person was not physically in front of them.
But in that case…
“This isn’t good… We easily outdo do them on the information gathering front, but that’s exactly why her Charm can spread without end. Her contamination will spread throughout the military.”
If only they could use Magic.
But that was not possible at the moment.
“…can…hear me? Someone respond!!”
The tight skirt woman clenched her teeth and listened to a radio transmission separate from the dead monitors.
“This is the Shinjuku Station PB! We’re full up! The trains aren’t running and we’re already over capacity for evacuees! Sending any more here would be dangerous!! Send the evacuees elsewhere! And more importantly, she’s…goddammit, what the hell is that huge-ass squid monster!? It’s more than 10 stories tall! Can someone with Grandnir experience explain this!?”
“You’ve gotta be kidding…”
Soon thereafter, a violent tremor shook the truck. The tight skirt glasses woman made up her mind and brought the monitors back to life.
She saw countless bizarrely shaped creatures crawling on the buildings and elevated train tracks or highways.
“Tselika took in someone with a summoning Job!? Dammit!!”
“Boo Boo.”
“…”
Beatrice called out that name in the rubble-strewn inn town.
Boo Boo was hanging his head.
He had wanted to save the Nun who was having stones thrown at her for no good reason. He had wanted to stop the Religious Society because they were being mean to the Succubus and had even sent in a Break News. He had wanted to rescue a girl who was having her life taken for a purge of Nonhumans instead of to live or to eat. But all those feelings had been betrayed, trampled on, and used against him. He likely felt responsible.
“It’s okay, Boo Boo. There’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“But I can’t go to your world. I can’t help at all.”
He stopped speaking there.
And then he started up again.
“I can’t even stop the Nun.”
Technically, Tselika had not gone to Earth. She was still in Grandnir and only influencing Earth through the thin barrier between worlds, but there was nothing they could do on this side. Just as you could not observe or reach the edge of the ever-expanding universe, the demon would not fall back down anywhere visible as long as Gruagach continued to pull her toward Tokyo through the thin barrier.
“We’ll deal with our own world’s problem on our own. So don’t look so sad, Boo Boo.”
Beatrice gave him a baseless smile but then stopped speaking.
Boo Boo had hugged the slender girl.
He was not calm enough to do it like a pretentious gentleman. The giant Iberian Orc was trembling like a child lost in a strange city. He was afraid.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“…”
“I can’t go with you. I won’t be able to go save you even if you ask for help. I can’t do anything, so someone else has to stop the Nun. I know that, but I’m dumb, so I can’t stop myself from wanting you to stay here.”
What would Beatrice even be able to do?
If she did leave Grandnir and return to Tokyo, she would become a powerless girl. She would be unable to use any Magic at all. Her slender arms could not break a walnut, much less a boulder. She had never used a normal sword or gun. And on top of those physical issues were the political ones. Back in the real world, she was like a bird in a cage and could not take one step outside Roppongi’s Detached Magic Palace.
If there was nothing she could do, it would be best if she did not return.
It would be safer to remain in Grandnir until the commotion had died down.
The more she thought about it, the more hopeless any kind of attempt seemed.
But.
He had said nothing bad would happen if they all got along. That Nun would have been a part of that.
Beatrice nearly fell into self-loathing when she found herself thinking about her own safety while Boo Boo looked on the verge of tears.
So she threw out all of those boring assumptions before she started hating herself.
“Boo Boo.”
She threw out the vague smile.
That was not what she needed to calm his trembling.
“Don’t worry, Boo Boo. There’s still something you can do.”
“?”
“Surface level niceties don’t matter. I trust that we truly understand each other’s hearts. So let’s speak frankly here. That way we can eliminate the weight hanging between us.”
“Right. I trust you too.”
Boo Boo rubbed his eyes and nodded several times.
Beatrice wished he was not 4 meters tall so she could reach his head.
“Boo Boo, it is true that we are partially responsible for this. I won’t say all responsibility lies with us, but we did lay out the fuse leading to the bomb. But make no mistake. There is still something we can do instead of letting that responsibility crush us.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I’ll be returning to the other side. You were right that you can’t go to Tokyo, but there is something you can do here in Grandnir. Are you willing to hear me out?”
This went beyond just protecting Tokyo or Japan.
It was about Boo Boo.
She would protect that kind Iberian Orcs’ soul. She would save him.
This would come with its own risks. And these risks filled her gut with far more tension than the formless ideas of the world or humankind.
She would bet her life on this fight. For his sake.
“Okay, are you listening, Boo Boo?”
In the Detached Magic Palace of Roppongi, Tokyo, a girl in a red dress Signed Out through her exclusive Gate and saw several thin contrails cutting across the blue sky. That was probably a formation of JSDF fighters. She prayed it was not some missiles fired into the city from an American submarine.
She then spotted a small maid waiting near the gazebo in the large garden. If she could see the maid, the maid could see her, so this was no time to be sneaking around. She walked boldly up to the maid and placed her hands on the small girl’s shoulders.
And she asked a question at extreme close range.
“Haruka, we’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Uuh, I really don’t want to be friends with someone who starts a conversation like that…”
“Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to do anything dangerous. In fact, you don’t have to do anything at all. I want you to overlook something.”
“?”
The maid tilted her head in confusion, so the twintail girl inhaled and exhaled.
Her heart was pounding.
But she still said it.
“I’m about to break out of the Detached Magic Palace, but I want you to keep quiet about-…”
“Ugyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”
The maid screamed before she could even finish making her request.
This maid was not worthy of friendship. The girl pouted her lips as the oldest sister Iroka and second sister Misoka arrived to see what was going on.
The smallest maid’s mouth flapped open and closed as she pointed at her master’s face and did her best to make a report and share her information.
“U-u-umm! Milady is…try…trying to…she said she’s trying to leave the Detached Magic Palace on her own!!”
As the small one’s voice jumped all over the place, the medium and large ones rubbed their finger against their temple.
Iroka, the glasses tutor and the maid with the biggest chest, winked and asked a question.
“Does this have anything to do with the contrails overhead?”
“Exactly. It couldn’t have more to do with it.”
Misoka, the sporty second sister who handled the heavy lifting during the cleaning and garden work, spoke next.
“Is there any reason you have to deal with this yourself, lady?”
“It is true that I don’t have a grand reason such as stopping a world war fought over the Pieces. But I want to do whatever I can to protect someone important to me who is feeling depressed back in Grandnir because of how responsible he feels about all this. He wanted to save the Nun from having her life lost in a purge that was entirely unnecessary to live or to eat. He wanted to get along with everyone. But his feelings were trampled on and he can’t save her since he can’t leave that world. There might be 7 billion other people in this world, but I’m the only one that can save his soul here.”
“I see.”
The maids looked at their master’s face with an appraising look.
They were charged with taking care of the dress girl and keeping her in top condition, but the Information Broker also had them report on any hint of coming danger and use force if necessary to swiftly stop any attempted “jailbreak”.
…Officially, anyway.
“Very well, we will accept this job.”
“A sheltered girl like you wouldn’t know, lady, but Tokyo is a dangerous city. Especially for pretty girls like you. You will need some bodyguards.”
The red dress girl’s eyes widened.
Even Haruka, who had loudly betrayed her, clenched her small fists and gave a snort.
“That’s right! You mustn’t even think about going out on your own!! If you’re leaving, you need to take us with you!!”
“…”
The black twintail girl was utterly shocked.
She and the 3 maids had been having different arguments the whole time.
“U-um, are you sure about that? Given your position and all…”
“Miss, no one stands in a more dangerous position than you. So we must also accept some risk.”
Iroka, the biggest maid, crossed her arms and lifted her ample breasts from below.
“And I liked that you mentioned someone important to you. Yes, I liked it very much. You have been imprisoned in this birdcage for the convenience of the nation…no, the world. You could have held a grudge against the entire world for that, but you still managed to find someone important to you. I won’t let the Information Broker crush that underfoot.”
The report reached the Ushigashira Shrine in Akasaka, Tokyo, almost immediately.
The coke bottle glasses shrine maiden with fluffy blonde hair tied in a long tube shape went pale, but she did not have time to feel faint. She scrambled out of the Dragon Palace Chamber.
The voice in the attic spoke to her like normal.
“Where are you going, stupid girl?”
“We can give the title of ‘stupid’ to Beatrice. She’s…that complete idiot! I don’t know if this is for Boo Boo or what, but why doesn’t she know this will only place the noose around her own neck? She might never be able to go back to Grandnir!!”
“The same goes for you. Do not forget your Ushigashira duty. Your job is to-…”
“Oh, shut up, you old hag!! A good friend I’m willing to entrust my life to is prepared to throw out her entire life here! How can I just follow the rules and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch!?”
“…”
Silence followed.
But it lacked the tension of a silent elevator. It was a somehow soft and gentle atmosphere.
“Then head outside and stop by the 4th storeroom. The key to the basement is inside one of the temari balls in the kid’s room. The one that rattles when you shake it.”
“?”
She did as instructed and felt like she had wandered outside of Japan.
It was like a collection in a movie. Every wall was covered in cutting-edge firearms. There were also plenty of bulletproof vests, gasmasks, and grenades of various types. It was a major problem that a historical shrine had this hidden below it. It could easily turn into a scandal.
“Wh-why is all this here?”
Weapons had originally been stored below the shrine after the end of World War Two so they could put up a thorough resistance if the American military tried to pillage the shrine’s valuable cultural assets and that collection had been continually updated as time passed, but the old lady’s voice gave an immediate answer that elided all of that lengthy tradition.
“It must have been prepared for this very day.”
The fallen star student – or rather, translucent Tselika who indirectly controlled her through the armor binding her – had known her destination from the beginning.
“Ebisu 1-3 Sakuradai Kubancho Minamigasaki 8-4. Hmm, as I thought, it isn’t in this girl’s knowledge. I’ll just have to hope for a general idea…”
Black smoke and dust blew from the frontline where Tselika spoke in an almost carefree tone with her angel halo, devil horns, scale swimsuit, and thick snake hagoromo.
The area was a complete disaster zone.
An explosion had blasted a tank’s turret straight up. An armored truck had broken through the ground and fallen into the subway station. An attack helicopter had pierced a building wall while its rotor continued to spin fruitlessly. After the pilot ejected, a fighter pinwheeled through the sky while spewing explosive flames.
The foot soldiers had fared no better.
Just like a losing army, a look in the alleyways would likely find men who had frantically stripped off their camouflage uniforms. Needless to say, they were trying to escape harm by blending in with the civilians.
And if they were doing that, there was no need to deal with them.
They were not even worth taking in with her Charm.
She was using the Summon Hunter’s power to send out a variety of creatures, but once they lost sight of their target, the started fighting each other for control of this territory. A one-eyed giant known as a Cyclops and a slithering multi-headed dragon known as a Typhon were clashing between 5-story buildings that matched their height. They were the same as Tselika. They were interfering in Tokyo because Gruagach allowed them to push their power against the other side of the thin layer between worlds.
Tselika thought to herself as she sent Gruagach below the arch created by fighting monsters.
(It would probably be about 50/50 if they sent in fully program-controlled drones, but it looks like they want to have a human cushion in place to avoid malfunctions. That makes it easy to control them. My Charm can contaminate hearts even through relayed messages and letters. It doesn’t matter if I am actually there or not.)
Goat-horned Tselika’s modern knowledge was based on that of star student Gruagach, so it was biased in certain directions. She did not find much about the military, but she was surprised to find a lot of reference material in entertainment movies when it came to unmanned weapons. It took guts to rely on that when one’s life was on the line. Tselika had to grimace.
“Cars, trains… They seem to have a lot of convenient systems built up, but it looks like both of those have been stopped. I suppose walking will be my best option.”
Tselika was using a borrowed body, so she only cared that it lasted long enough to achieve her goal. Muscular exhaustion was of no concern to her. When a three-headed guard dog known as a Cerberus and a fertility snake woman known as an Echidna bared their fangs against Gruagach, Tselika used the sacrifice’s fists to beat them down before continuing her march.
More and more creatures were summoned everywhere within 200 meters around them: behind vending machines, below cars, inside manholes, etc. Some of them ignored the road altogether and appeared inside the buildings and behind barricades. Some even surrounded Tselika as if to curse her.
But the demon did not care.
The Grandnir monsters were indeed powerful, but they were still no match for Tselika.
That was just how powerful the cultural fire known as Magic was.
Meanwhile…
“?”
With a loud screech of tires on asphalt (a noise Tselika was quickly growing accustomed to), a cold storage truck came to a rapid stop a short distance away. The rear door opened and someone stepped out. It was a glasses woman with her long hair tied back whose tight suit had the necktie removed. She looked different, but Tselika still recognized her. Translucent Tselika scoffed and named the woman while embracing the drooling and unfocused star student.
“Armelina, huh?”
“You have good eyes. So you know what kind of fighting style I prefer, right?”
A heavy sound followed.
A metal ball the size of a balance ball was attached to a thick chain. It should have been far too heavy for the woman’s slender arms to support, but she lightly tossed it up with a single arm and caught it like it was made of rubber.
“I’m a Fighter Priest. I might rely on Magic, but the basic element is physical force. …So if I can use other means to reproduce the physical support the Magic provides, it isn’t hard to recreate my Grandnir fighting style back here in the real world.”
In this case, she wore a reinforcing suit that was expected to assist in construction, nursing, agriculture, and the military.
It was primarily located around her hips, but robot arms seemed to crawl out onto her bare arms and legs. This representative smart tool was rumored to allow someone to carry several times or even several dozen times as much weight as a normal person.
She would also sometimes summon a Magic metal ball that absorbed the destroyed rubble to increase its attack power with each swing, but that was easily recreated with a metal ball and a tank of instant glue.
“That’s why I was known as a bizarre level cap adventurer, but it looks like that title’s been stolen from me. Now that I’ve been robbed of the belt, I’ve got to take it back.”
Several men and women in suits left the cold storage truck.
They all held identical metal balls and thick chains to the glasses woman known as Armelina.
“I’ll be taking it back with me and they’ll show what the mass-produced model can do. What would we do without the Ministry of Defense’s tech lab? This is human strength. If we monopolize the technology, its value rises. If we release it, everyone can do the same thing. It all comes down to how you use it.”
“Heh heh.”
Translucent Tselika traced her fingers across the star student’s bodylines as she laughed.
She ignored the monsters fighting each other nearby and she kept Armelina in the center of her vision.
“That is impressive. It is an approach not found in this girl’s knowledge. You could even say the atmosphere here belongs to you. …But have you forgotten? Gruagach the fallen student is still wearing this Shining Weapon armor. And it is still armor rather than a USB key. That means she has truly brought Magic here. So she can use Command-type attack Magic of any Element she wants.”
A sticky sound came from Gruagach’s feet.
Several tentacles thicker than anacondas stretched out from her shadow. They crawled up her bare legs, wrapped around her thighs, and attempted to violate her entire body.
All of a sudden, she held a Western-style bow with a stabilizer and with a knife on either end.
Yes, this was a 2nd Shining Weapon.
The armor and bow made 2. The translucent demon ignored all of the rules as she controlled her puppet and pierced the crawling tentacles with the bow’s lower knife. The thick, thick tentacles left some stickiness on Gruagach’s thighs as they were absorbed by the manmade object. The bowstring wriggled creepily and was drawn.
If she nocked an arrow, the wriggling tentacles would be transferred to that like an infection.
The bizarre monster would be contained inside the arrowhead as if sealing a poison or an explosive inside.
Gruagach was a Summon Hunter.
That rare Job allowed her to call up any Grandnir Nonhuman she had made a contract with and either make it fight for her or seal it in her blade to transform the weapon’s effects.
Tselika laughed as she viewed the eerily pulsating arrowhead and the tentacle tips that occasionally jutted out.
“A Scylla, hm? Not bad. This arrowhead will swim freely through the air upon its release, its 12 legs will entangle the target, and their viselike grip can crush even a steel pillar. But you are about to discover that firsthand, Armelina.”
“…That Shining Weapon.”
“The armor is the one in control. The arrow is a slave device, or maybe more like an extra option. But as you can plainly see, these are not built to show any concern for the bearer’s personality.”
As the translucent demon embraced the star student from behind, she buried her face in the girl’s nape. When the demon’s lips touched her neck, a glowing emblem of unknown effect spread across her skin.
Gruagach had already shown no sign of resistance, but now the last shreds of her will vanished from her fingers.
Now that she had become a true puppet, the mass of soft skin raised the bow.
The stabilizer-equipped bow accurately targeted its prey.
“Now, I will reclaim the atmosphere here in an instant. And you will become yet another puppet. Think carefully about what it is you wanted to protect enough to stand in my way like this. That is the list of what you are about to lose.”
“Hah.”
The tight suit and black panty hose woman laughed quietly with the metal ball in hand.
She belonged to an external sector that left no official records by acting as a private detective agency that gathered retired police officers and JSDF officers. She understood the value of information, so she did not speak her actual thoughts in front of her enemy.
There was never a 100% chance of victory in battle. But she had accepted that risk. She had received a report from Roppongi’s Detached Magic Palace. She knew a certain girl was plotting something, so she needed nothing more. This was worth it if she could buy some time and increase that girl’s odds of success.
That was valuable information, so the glasses woman smiled and spoke to hide it.
“Let’s go, little girl. I just wish you could lend me that Charm Skill of yours.”
“?”
She swung the metal ball around by its thick chain.
This was an undeniable hostile act. The heavy metal ball dully and gradually picked up speed like it was rolling down a hill.
“I have a pretty rough job, so I haven’t exactly been blessed in the romance department. I thought I might still have a faint chance left in Grandnir, but then this trouble had to crop up. I’ll teach you not to underestimate a human woman’s grudge!!”
It was only a slight difference, but Armelina of course knew that delayed information could produce devastating results.
“Sorry. I’ll listen to your criticism later. Tell me what’s happening!”
“Chief!!”
She left through the Gate to Sign Out. When she returned to a corner of the city, she was a beautiful woman in glasses with her black hair tied back and wearing a tight skirt suit with the tie removed and the first few buttons undone.
This was not a specially cleared area in an expensive part of the city like the Detached Magic Palace in Roppongi or the Ushigashira Shrine in Akasaka. Nor was it a secret facility deep below the Metropolitan Police Department or the National Police Agency. After all, she and her coworkers did not work in public security or foreign affairs. They were an external sector that performed the investigation that could not be done through the official channels. They were officially known as a private detective agency staffed by retired police officers and JSDF officers.
She was below a rundown elevated railroad in Shinjuku.
She was inside a cold storage truck stopped there. Its refrigeration was of course turned off and it was stuffed full of steel racks, flat screen monitors, and computers with their internal power sources bypassed. A slight space was left cleared in the center. There was nothing physically there, but it was a crystallization of cutting-edge technology that qualified as a national secret. That was the fruit of their research and they could not let it reach even their allied nations. It was still in development, but it was a mobile Gate that was not reliant on a specific location.
As the incident with the Religious Society showed, moving between Earth and Grandnir introduced a large informational risk. Grandnir had been known as spy heaven ever since the Cold War when the Americans and the Soviets were pointing nuclear missiles at each other. That risk could be somewhat reduced by monitoring the Gates on the Earth side, but the existence of mobile Gates would entirely overturn that assumption.
The other workers waiting in the truck began to speak.
“The situation could not be worse. You can call it unprecedented if you want. I imagine you already know since you performed an emergency unplanned Sign Out, but…something has come out.”
“So the information I got in Grandnir was right.”
The woman in the tight suit just about bit her thumbnail out of habit, but then she remembered she was in front of her subordinates.
Even so, she could not restrain her panic and irritation.
She was not entirely unconnected to this incident. While she had not caused it, she had helped lay out the fuse leading to the bomb.
She looked to one of the many flat screen monitors.
They showed the scene outside using the security cameras set up around the city. Black smoke was rising from multi-tenant buildings in Tokyo and innocent residents were fleeing along the sidewalk and roads alike.
“Despite the panic, order has been maintained. It is highly unlikely that this will lead to any moral hazards such as looting or rioting.”
“That isn’t what I was worried about.”
Yes, that was a concern, but it was secondary.
The real problem lay elsewhere.
“Gruagach…”
The tight skirt woman muttered the name of the woman who had been at the center of the Religious Society.
That alone would be completely normal. Just as this glasses woman went by the name of Armelina, everyone had a second identity when exploring the Labyrinth. There was nothing odd about the woman named Gruagach walking around Tokyo.
But the woman’s eyes narrowed sharply as she viewed the many monitors lining the wall.
“So your appearance really is the same as in Grandnir.”
People’s appearance changed between the 2 worlds because of the Percentage-style Magic that formed their clothing.
In other words, they could not maintain their Grandnir appearance when no longer in an environment that allowed for Magic. Or it should have meant that. But that was not what surprised the tight skirt woman the most. Another fact was so shocking that even that paled in comparison.
And that other fact was the primary problem.
“The Succubus…”
She had once worn a white habit.
But now that demon unnaturally embraced Gruagach from behind, pressed her cheek against the woman, and smiled thinly.
“So my information was right! She really has appeared here! But how!?”
What was going on?
The answer was found a bit earlier and in another world.
It began in the inn town when the scars of destruction were still fresh.
Since most of the humans were unconscious, Boo Boo had visited despite normally being feared. He and Armelina were strong, so they moved the rubble to search for anyone buried alive. Filinion used a recovery potion on anyone they found.
Beatrice did not have much to do there, but she had another important job: tie up the unconscious members of the Religious Society and confiscate their Shining Weapons.
“You have no idea what you have done,” hoarsely said a woman in mourning clothes and a veil. “You let the witch escape. You assisted her. So whatever she might do now, what happens next is your responsibility. Are you prepared to go down in history as one of those who destroyed the world?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m asking if you are prepared. You will come to regret choosing to act based on your own spoiled emotions.”
She thought this was only the ravings of a lunatic.
She decided to ignore the woman and forget it all.
But when she looked up again, a slight – ever so slight – question occurred to her.
Yes.
“Where did the Nun go?”
Fairy Queen Sutriona stabbed something into the nutrient-rich garden next to Boo Boo’s leaf house near a mountain river.
“Hmph.”
“Ghah!!”
It was Ileana, the plant Break News and the greatest Mandragora who wore a dress made of grape leaves and vines. Technically, it was just one of her.
“Out of respect for what Boo Boo and the others accomplished, I’ll end this here. Heal your wounds there, perverted carrot.”
“Oh, what’s this? Now that I look at it, this land isn’t bad. To think that cursed Iberian Orc has a talent for preparing soil. It might not look nice, but I appreciate his love for the flowers. It’s so much nicer than some insects I could mention.”
“You can’t have him.”
“He doesn’t belong to you. Ahhhhh! Th-this is perrrrrrfect…”
Ileana cried out like she was soaking up to the shoulders in a hot spring that soothed ones weariness.
Her face grew flushed as she said more.
“But you truly are a troublesome insect. Thanks to your interference, the Religious Society has retreated. Now I won’t get my reward.”
“I’m sure it had to do with women, so I really don’t care.”
“You understand, don’t you?” Ileana giggled. “All I ask for a job is a virgin. But I don’t take her and devour her. I essentially call dibs to ensure no one else can touch her. I enjoy freeing them from the many bonds humans place on each other.
In this case, that was the Religious Society.
When someone said they could only live one way, she would show them there were other options. She would show them that they could get by just fine once they took that first step. That was how Ileana found her purpose in life.
Sutriona understood all that, but she still spat out the same thing.
“I don’t care. When you kill someone and save someone, are you cancelling out the death? That’s only your interpretation. Don’t be so naïve, mercenary. Don’t play the predator if you aren’t prepared to be eaten. At the very least, you could have followed a path of nonviolence and yet not lost anything at all, making you the envy of every pacifist.”
“Perhaps so. But at least let me wallow in regret. Gruagach was a truly unfortunate girl. The Religious Society alone would have been bad enough, but even her mental escape route was dyed in evil.”
“?”
By the time Sutriona tilted her head, a clear change had already begun.
The Nun in a white habit was gone.
When Boo Boo, Filinion, and Armelina heard that, they discovered another concern.
“One is missing,” said Beatrice. “I remember how many enemies I defeated and one of those women in mourning clothes is missing.”
“So the Nun and one of the Religious Society who were pursuing her are missing?”
“Squeal. Could this be really bad?”
“Wait, wait, wait. Don’t tell me she was taken away after all that.”
They had already been searching for anyone buried in the rubble, so they split up and resumed the search.
As Boo Boo moved the rubble out of the way, they eventually came to the ruins of the church.
“What is this?”
The roof was gone, most of the walls had collapsed, and nearly the entire building was only rubble, but a small area had survived.
It had likely been a tiny storage space hidden inside the pipe organ by the wall. It had broken apart, the lock was now useless, and its contents were exposed to Boo Boo.
There were several pieces of parchment inside.
Boo Boo did not know if they were valuable, so he showed them to Beatrice who looked shocked and began reading through them.
“It’s a lot like the notes used by a phone scam group… They follow these arrows to know what to say depending on what the other person says. It’s a flowchart for controlling someone’s heart.”
“Boo?”
Boo Boo did not seem to get it, but Beatrice decided it would be best for him if she did not explain it in more detail. Someone who had mastered a guide like this would not need it anymore. They would only keep it around if they had a plain form with fields to be filled in. They would investigate an individual and write down what they found to more effectively grasp their heart.
“But this is pretty complex and detailed. They must have had a specific target in mind from pretty early on. Boo Boo, you said you found this in the church? That would mean the Nun was manipulating some specific person.”
But who?
After some thought, she ran into an assumption they had made earlier.
“It’s possible the Religious Society woman didn’t abduct the Nun.”
“Beatrice, are you saying the Nun took the Religious Society woman away?”
The Holy Swordswoman thought for a moment.
She used her fire illusion Magic to draw out some frames and red lines and she felt faint at the great change she saw.
The overall structure was falling apart. It was being remade. What if the Nun and the Religious Society had been secretly connected even as they caused this entire incident? Had the Nun known about the attack in advance? No, had she intentionally made herself the source of conflict to pull the trigger? That would mean she had planned for the Religious Society to bring in Ileana and to greatly damage the inn town.
But if so, what for?
What about the current situation helped her in any way?
“…”
“Beatrice?”
“No, it can’t be…”
A thought started to rise in the back of her mind, but she rejected it herself.
“She can’t. She just can’t. Even if it’s left wide open, it’s simply impossible…”
At that very moment, Beatrice turned toward Boo Boo with a look of utter disbelief in her eyes. Her eyes were opened as wide as they would go and the shock that raced through them was just like running into a field of unimaginable despair.
“What is it, Beatrice? Did I do something wrong?”
“No, it isn’t that…”
Technically, Beatrice was not looking at Boo Boo.
She was looking at what hung from his waist.
That giant Shining Weapon could be mistaken for a log or a steel beam.
And…
“Yes. That’s right. If a great number of Iberian Orc souls can be sealed inside a Shining Weapon…”
“?”
“Humans can pass through the Gates, but Nonhumans can’t. That’s an undeniable fact, but if those Nonhumans can change form, that assumption falls apart…”
Out of all the myriad possibilities, why had her thoughts jumped to that one?
There were two reasons.
First, it led to the greatest risk if accomplished.
Second, it explained why the Succubus would use the Religious Society woman to take out everyone in the inn town.
“If the Succubus was planning something this big, someone would have stopped her under normal circumstances. Every human in Grandnir would have dropped whatever they were doing and rushed her. She wouldn’t be able to accomplish her goal if that happened. The Sign Out process takes several minutes, so if we held every Gate, we could strike back while she was defenseless.”
The reality of this theoretical risk gradually grew inside Beatrice.
“But things are different now. The power of a Break News attacked the inn town and most of the humans in Grandnir are unconscious, so she can do anything now! Yes, like a final experiment for sending a demon to Earth!!”
The Holy Swordswoman dug through the pile of rubble some more.
She found plenty of documents and evidence.
Controlling a star student was quite easy.
The purity of their heart would lead them to eliminate any discrepancies between their ideal self and their actual self. It could be anything: looks, academics, athletics, income, job title, behavior, etc. As long as you discovered the source of their insecurities, you could drive them to a state of inextricable dependence.
“Uuh…”
The woman wore bluish-black mourning clothes and a veil.
She had a modest chest and her extremely long and whitish-blonde hair still reached her waist despite being braided and bent into a U shape.
She was known as Gruagach.
She had once been a hound of the Religious Society who was entirely pure and fulfilled her missions like a machine, but once her fall began, it would not stop. The white Succubus clung to her back, wrapped her arms around the woman’s neck, and rubbed her cheek against the woman’s cheek, but the poor woman could only groan.
“I…I really was wrong. I shouldn’t have done this. But…but I… Ahh! I should have immediately cast aside this power!!”
“But you cannot get rid of me now.”
It was like a gentle whisper.
The pure white demon had an angel’s halo and she licked the woman’s cheek with her long tongue as she sweetly whispered into her ear.
She had already revealed her identity and the habit was gone. With the clothes stripped away, her sexy body was only covered by a swimsuit-like garment made from reptilian scales and the thick white snake wrapped around her body like a hagoromo.
Her goat horns and bodylines had also grown larger and fuller. The Succubus intended to influence the earth, but she could not cross the boundary between worlds even if she did seal her soul inside a Shining Weapon. She would be blocked by the boundary between Grandnir and Earth, so she could only influence the other side as if through a thin layer of rubber.
But it did not matter either way.
If you knocked on a wall, it would make a noise. If you heated a glass panel with a burner, the other side could burn you. If you pressed a magnet against the underside of a thin film, you could control the metal nails on the other side. As long as she could influence the other side like that, the demon might as well exist on the other side. Something would stand there in a form that people’s senses would detect.
And the group on the Grandnir side of the thin layer would never be able to capture the demon.
She would become something like a being that pressed against the outer edge of the ever-expanding universe. They would know she existed in the same world, but no one would be able to observe or reach her.
As long as this poor woman named Gruagach acted as the Succubus’s anchor, anyway.
“After all, everyone will be after you now. You need more power than ever. So you have no choice but to follow my plan. If you don’t, you’ll be pecked at from every direction. You’ll be left in an even sorrier state than a sugar cube dropped in front of an anthill. You don’t want to turn out like that, do you?”
“…”
The president had grown beautiful.
She had shined each time she challenged the Labyrinth. The words of envy had echoed through her mind.
“Orrrr will you return to your former self? Would you prefer to be powerless, unable to even walk through the Labyrinth, and just one of the pitiful workers whose name no one remembers?”
“No!! Anything but that! I can’t go back to what I was like back then!!”
Gruagach shook her head half-madly.
It was not that she had no talent.
She was a Summon Hunter. That was a rare Job that let her bind contracts with the Nonhumans on the surface of Grandnir and either fill her blade with their power or directly summon them to fight within the Labyrinth. That Job was on the same level as a Holy Swordswoman, White Witch, or Fighter Priest.
But she had not had anywhere to use that talent.
In exchange for being able to summon any Nonhuman, she could not summon anything without binding a contract first. But strict Gruagach had been very poor at negotiating. And she had lacked the initial power needed to make a Nonhuman bind a contract by force. She had long been trapped in a state that was much like locking her keys in the car.
Once the Succubus had realized that, it had been easy to manipulate her.
She had lent Gruagach the use of a Succubus’s special Skill: Charm. Gruagach had used that Charm to win over and bind contracts with more and more of the Nonhumans in Grandnir.
Yes, by covering her entire body with a light pink oil flavored by multiple herbs and the blood from the Succubus’s wrist. And just as perfume bonded with the oils and moisture of the skin, the unclean blood had mixed in with the sacrifice. And that was one of the powers that would pull at the demon through the thin layer.
“This is just like the illness recovery tours. Even if objects and life forms can’t be directly passed back and forth, the fact that your ailing body was healed will remain back in your world, right?”
Gruagach had quickly risen to the top of the Religious Society’s ranks.
But that had all been based on the Succubus’s assistance.
If the Succubus cut off her Skill, all of the Nonhumans trapped by her Charm would return to their senses. They would abandon their contract and leave Gruagach. If that happened, she would lose her power once more. She would be ruined. Gruagach’s glory was entirely reliant on the Succubus.
She had soared high with that power, but that only increased the shock of the inevitable fall.
That led her fear to grow without end.
“Sob, hic. What are you trying to do?”
“What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“Answer me!! Why have you ruined…absolutely ruined my life!?”
“Because you had talent.”
The Succubus faintly smiled, embraced the woman from behind, and ran her hands along the bodylines that showed through the mourning clothes.
No.
“You had talent for corruption. I mean, a normal person would have been overwhelmed by this point and made a mistake. They would have roused the others’ suspicions, had their identity revealed, and dropped out of the running.”
“Uuh.”
“Buuuut. You managed to deceive them all until now. No one suspected you were wearing something like this under those pretty clothes. This secret looks perfect on you, don’t you think?☆”
“Uuuuhh…!!”
The Succubus moved slowly.
There should have been more than enough time to resist, but Gruagach could not.
The mourning clothes were stripped from the fully tamed woman’s body. So was the veil from her face. That clothing was technically Percentage-type Magic, so it dissolved into the air. And that left…
“My, my. This was originally a full set of armor and a man’s Shining Weapon, but as I gradually made the necessary modifications, the design dramatically changed. Well, this may just be a reflection of my own tastes. It makes it hard for the wearer to go out in public, doesn’t it?”
It was a blue and black set of light armor with something like a swimsuit’s pareo added on. That was not too rare in Grandnir, but it also had something like leather belts binding her body in places.
A red, glowing, and venomous needle was installed on the end of the tail that curved upwards from the back of her hips. Insect legs grasped her hips from behind and two giant pincers with red tips pushed up on her modest chest from below.
Overall, it was reminiscent of a scorpion.
But the most ominous features were the keyholes at the points where the belts intersected. That suggested that the wearer could never remove it of her own free will.
It was a modified Shining Weapon. It ignored its wielder’s will.
If she was wearing that Shining Weapon armor and had the Succubus’s soul sealed inside her thanks to the herbal oil soaked into her soft skin, she would intentionally catch on the barrier between worlds. That would separate the demon from her sacrifice. And it would bring the large-horned Succubus as close as possible to the filter between worlds.
“Now, let us begin. You return through your Gate and my power will bind to your body through the thin layer. That will mean success and give us cause to celebrate.”
“Khahh!?”
The star student had no choice but to fall, but when she tried to put up a futile resistance regardless, her entire body gave a violent jerk.
Just as the long scorpion’s tail rose behind her hips, it mercilessly stabbed into the sacrifice’s back.
It was like a plug and an earphone jack. The armor already had several coin-sized holes, and it stabbed into one of those.
Sparks burst before her eyes.
Her mouth flapped wordlessly, her eyes opened as wide as they could, and she took desperate and deep breaths. None of this changed anything. Just like someone growing accustomed to the heat or the cold, the star student’s mind adapted to this new state.
“Ahn.”
The translucent demon cried out like some kind of joke, but she was not teasing the victim.
She now shared her senses with Gruagach and she was able to enjoy the scorching pain.
“If you want to give up, just tell me. I have an intimate understanding of your suffering. Pleasure and anesthesia are two sides of the same coin, so a little help from a demon can solve this right away.”
“Kh.”
Finally, the tail plug slowly pulled out.
It had not simply been a toxin. As soon as the signal left, the pain receded. She could speak again, but the marionette had to gasp for breath as she asked her question.
“What…uuh…what are you…planning…planning to do on…Earth?”
“Do you know how the only man I ever loved ultimately lost his life?”
Her previous calm had vanished.
All emotion vanished from the Succubus’s voice as she whispered.
“He was assassinated. He was thrown to the bottom of a seldom-visited canyon and his legs were trapped between boulders so he could not approach the Gate and Sign Out. Then his mind and body were both slowly, slowly, slowly worn away.”
Gruagach was trembling now.
This was no comparison to before. What had once been a star student was trembling intensely from the core of the core of the core of her being. She trembled in hopeless fear and regret as if she had thoughtlessly opened Pandora’s Box.
“At the time, it still wasn’t known that objects and life forms other than the data contained in the Shining Weapons could not be directly brought back to your world, so they tried a great many things. They tried swallowing bags of herbs to fill their stomach and intestines, they tried slicing open their arms and legs to fill them with the gears used as currency, and they tried injecting potions into their blood with syringes and IVs. Those methods were proved ineffective by the experimenters’ deaths. Ultimately, they learned that only a few grams was the limit even if they sliced open their body. …Well, it was partially to put a stop to those demonic experiments, but it ultimately comes down to interests. There were simply a lot of people who found it more convenient if only data could be brought back. They were afraid of allowing humankind to step outside the theories proposed by that person you call the Sage.”
What was this demon trying to do?
What was she hoping to do on a planet teeming with humans!?
“Now is the time to sharpen our souls and bring back those evil deeds.”
But there was nothing Gruagach could do.
The heavy lid had already been removed.
The great hole connecting worlds had already been opened.
“My name is Tselika. Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier. As I hold a single corpse in my arms, I shall fulfill my goal even if it means making an enemy of every universal law and crossing the barrier between worlds.”
And now time returns to the present.
The location moves to the Ushigashira Shrine in Akasaka, Tokyo.
“Grandmother!!”
After passing through the Gate to Sign Out, the coke bottle glasses shrine maiden with fluffy blonde hair tied in a long tube shape ignored her own exhaustion and shouted toward the ceiling.
“Do you know what’s going on outside? What happened with that Succubus!?”
“No need to yell. They’re showing it on TV.”
“TV?”
The humans from Earth had always unilaterally passed through the Gates, learned as much Magic as they wanted, and returned without anyone interfering. They had never considered the possibility of the Nonhumans interfering with Earth. That was why society had been able to accept something as extremely irregular as Grandnir.
If that stronghold crumbled, it could easily lead to a worldwide panic.
This was blatantly not something that the mass media should be thoughtlessly reporting on.
“It was a real tragedy that it happened during the day,” explained her “grandmother”. “In other words, while the Diet was in session. It’s a legal issue, but the current system doesn’t allow for a Diet meeting to be canceled even in an emergency.”
The fluffy blonde glasses shrine maiden quickly looked down to her smartphone. The internet was down across the board, but she could still use the full seg broadcast app that picked up the signal directly from the station instead of through a browser. She tuned into a nationally-run station and found a question and answer session being held in a storm of heckling, angry shouting, and camera flashes.
“It seems the JSDF was deployed across the entire city, but was that your decision!? I do not recall a defense deployment request being submitted to those of us in the Diet. Nor was there a vote. So should I take this to mean the JSDF has become your personal army!?”
“As this is a rescue operation and not a defense deployment, everything I have done is perfectly legal under current law.”
The next thing she heard forced the shrine maiden to focus on a definite invasion.
“This is the very first time that a Break News – a paradox brought about by extreme environmental change – has reached our land in this world, so I would like you to think of my decision as the will of all the people of our nation.”
She felt faint.
Her exhaustion likely helped. The core of her body wavered and she collapsed to the tatami mats.
“Grand…mother…”
“It’s just as you’ve heard. I don’t know what she was originally, but now that she’s been confirmed inside the city, her rank has been increased. So whatever she might be, she will apparently be treated like a Break News.”
The shrine maiden checked the other channels and saw all the daytime variety shows and talk shows for housewives had been preempted. Inside a swiftly-prepared broadcast studio, employees scrambled around in the background as a woman announcer read the same script over and over. Now that the information had leaked out from the nationally-run broadcast, the local commercial broadcasts had likely decided any attempt at information control would fail to eliminate the chaos.
“We have just received further information on the Break News. All public transportation in the city has been stopped and the normal roads will also be sequentially shut down to prevent chaos. If you live in the affected area – especially if you cannot evacuate immediately – you should take shelter inside a sturdy building. Sheltering inside a car would only increase the danger, so please shelter inside a building. I repeat…”
(They need to evacuate? Shelter inside a sturdy building? That will remove the people from the streets. But what are they trying to get them away from?)
“Grandmother! Don’t tell me…!!”
It happened just as the shrine maiden yelled up at the ceiling.
The tranquil atmosphere of the Ushigashira Shrine was shredded by a great roar passing by overhead.
The entire large wooden building shook.
The fluffy blonde tearfully covered her ears and realized what was happening even without looking outside.
“Did they send fighters out!?”
“You haven’t seen it yet, but tanks and armored trucks are driving around the streets like they own the place. I have no idea how effective they’ll be, though. A good half of the military is all about appearances. When they have so much destructive power, they can’t just let an invader trample the city underfoot without fighting back.”
The attic voice paused there.
And then she spat out a much lower and more frightening voice than the shrine maiden had ever heard before.
“…They know it’s hopeless, but they’re still going to waste those innocent young lives.”
An out-of-place figure unsteadily appeared from a giant reinforced concrete box in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. It was Gruagach, the woman with long, long blonde hair and an outfit that looked like light armor, a pareo, and leather belts. Her looped braid had unraveled and spread out behind her. The long tail on the back of her hips and the pincers pushing up on her modest breasts provided a scorpion-esque look. And Tselika, the sexy and translucent demon, gently embraced that poor puppet from behind.
The demon technically did not exist on Earth. She could not directly interact with this world, but even while beyond the barrier between worlds, she was bound here by a great power. In the end, that difference mattered little. As long as she continued manipulating Gruagach through that barrier, she could see and touch everything on this side.
Haloed Tselika had not passed through a Gate. In fact, she had turned that idea on its head.
(There had to have been sporadic travel between the worlds before the very first Gate was built. That would explain mysterious disappearances and cryptid sightings. …And that means it isn’t the Gates that connect the worlds. If anything, they’re safety devices that restrict travel. So if I destroy a few of them while the humans are down, they would malfunction and the “mysterious disappearances” would begin anew.)
The barrier between worlds was thin and pliable. It was the Gates that had remade it into something more solid.
Tselika had gone to such great lengths to interfere with this other world, but she was still not satisfied.
(A gray city that reeks of smoke and soot. How boring. Was “he” targeted and killed in another world just to protect people’s control over something like this?)
With that emotion in her heart, she spoke with only wickedness in her voice.
It was not that one side or the other was her true self. This demon could process both conflicting sides without contradiction.
“Hmm. A public shared Gate, huh? Did the Religious Society decide that securing their own Gate would stand out too much for a secret organization?”
Her tone had entirely changed.
She laughed and spoke in her combination of a scale swimsuit and a snake hagoromo.
“It might be a religious one, but your base was a school? So the Religious Society’s elites were nothing but the kids in the student council? I know you can’t rely on people’s appearances in Grandnir, but no one would ever think the fearsome Religious Society was an afterschool adventure. Would they, Miss President?”
School, religious, student council, afterschool, president. Tselika toyed with the contents of the star student’s mind to gather the information she lacked and immediately mocked her for it.
This was why the Summon Hunter had wanted power badly enough to make a deal with a demon.
She was so talented in academics and athletics in her own world, but…no, thus it had damaged her pride something awful when she was branded incompetent for the first time in the other world. Especially when she was treated like a genius by everyone around her and had never experienced any setbacks or defeat.
The president had become beautiful. She had seemed to shine every time she challenged the Labyrinth. The praise had become the norm. And it was all thanks to what she did every time she visited Grandnir: took a special oil made from multiple herbs and Tselika’s blood and rubbed it across every inch of her soft skin for a much crueler transformation than at a beauty salon.
But Gruagach did not resist.
In fact…
“Ha ha…”
She laughed weakly.
Her head tilted limply to the side, her eyes were not focused on reality, and a few tufts of her blonde hair got in her mouth. She only continued to laugh as her face grew so slack that drool dripped freely out.
Tselika frowned and stuck the red plug needle into the star student’s back a few times.
But none of the jacks on the girl’s back produced the desired result.
Her shoulders, hips, and modest chest reflexively jerked irregularly, but it was not quite what the demon wanted.
The girl only laughed eerily flatly with her head tilted limply.
And with no concern for the pain of the plug or the long hair covering her face.
“Ah ha ha, ah ha ah ha ha. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha.”
“Hm, maybe my Charm was too powerful when I hijacked her through the armor. Well, as long as she can move her arms and legs. If I don’t control her autonomic nervous system, a variety of things would probably start spilling out.”
She made sure to double-check on something.
Not on Gruagach who was now a puppet, but on the scorpion armor she wore.
When returning to Earth from Grandnir, the Shining Weapon would take the form of a small USB key smaller than a keychain, but Tselika’s armor had been specially modified in Grandnir after being built on Earth. So even when it passed from Earth to Grandnir or vice versa, its power would fill the parts in both worlds. Like a Mobius strip, both sides were the same side, so it manifested itself in its full form on either side.
The star student had too much dopamine in her brain, so the demon took control of her arms and legs to lightly twist her body around.
“Looks like there won’t be a problem using Magic.”
At that very moment, metal could be heard tearing into the asphalt as the intersection 300 meters away was blockaded. Great masses of metal awaited them. Tselika would never have seen a tank before, but she did not seem surprised.
Thanks to the armor and thanks to the blood and herb mixture soaked into her soft skin, the drool-soaked star student’s body and brain were under the demon’s control. The demon could pull out whatever information she needed.
And Tselika had to snicker when she judged her opponent’s specs.
A man sticking out from the top of the tank aimed a heavy machinegun at her and shouted through a loudspeaker.
“Attention Break News! Disarm yourself and surrender before I count to 3! We will only give you this one chance! Waste it for any reason and we will view it as a hostile action and immediately open fire!”
“Is this a joke?” spat out the translucent demon as she pressed up against the poor doll. “I have no interest in pacifism. It means straying from my primary objective, but I am irritated by the way you make a living on a foundation of corpses. I will take that irritation out on you. My name is Tselika! My weapons are the horns on my head and my shields are the wings on my back. If you wish to disarm me, then come tear those from me, human!!”
The man was true to his warning.
Since Tselika had done “something else”, the camouflaged group did not bother counting to three. The line of tanks fired one after another and launched shells at more than 5 times the speed of sound. Anti-personnel canisters scattered more than 2000 bearing balls like fireworks and APFSDSs used infrared to accurately locate their target even within all the dust. Those spears of death opened holes in the target by melting the armor instead of breaking it and they mercilessly bared their fangs against that round, soft flesh.
There should have been nothing recognizable as human left.
“Didn’t I tell you, human?”
The atmosphere was entirely taken away.
While possessed by Tselika through the thin barrier between worlds, blonde Gruagach now stood on top of one of the tanks. She stood back to back with the heavy machinegun soldier. When? How? Before the shells had been fired? After? It was all so baffling that only the hands of the clock continued moving.
“Kh!”
So as not to hit their fellow soldier, the heavy machinegun soldiers sticking up from the tanks on either side pulled out their sidearms and aimed at Tselika’s alluring body.
Nevertheless, the translucent horned demon whispered.
“I asked if this was a joke. All of this, including your reaction here are far too slow.”
“?”
With an explosive noise, something cut by overhead.
It was a domestic stealth fighter from the JASDF passing between the buildings. The weapons bay was open for some reason and it had already launched an extra-large aerial bomb.
It was targeting Tselika in her scaled clothing and thick snake hagoromo and the pilot did not seem to notice anything else that was there.
“Wait…”
One of the soldiers looked up and shouted at the unfairness of it all.
And when he looked down, he saw further absurdity.
Tselika and Gruagach were nowhere to be found.
He could only see the bomb dropping toward them.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaait!?”
The bomber in the back seat gave a report while viewing a monitor that had reversed polarity so it would not grow entirely white from the explosive flames
“All bombs hit. Repeat, all bombs hit!”
“This is urban warfare and in the capital of Japan at that. It’d be a major problem if we missed. If we’re sure of that, then let’s get out of here.”
They did not notice they had blown away the ground unit with their bombs.
In fact, they could not see the ground unit. Or anything else besides Tselika.
So after finishing the bombing and beginning to rise to a safe altitude, their reaction upon seeing “that” may not have been surprising.
They saw “that” deep, deep, deep inside the window of a building several hundred meters ahead.
Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier.
And the star student she had hijacked.
However, they should not have been able to see her so deep inside that window as it reflected the sunlight.
“…Target spotted…”
The fighter changed heading and accelerated.
Similar warnings arrived over the radio.
“J-Wolf 02 to J-Wolf 01. We’ve spotted the target too.”
“J-Wolf 03 here. Awaiting instructions.”
“J-Wolf 04, we can target her. Let’s end this.”
The pilot breathed in and out. Several hundred meters was the blink of an eye for a fighter, so he did not hesitate to speak as the building wall spread out before his eyes.
“J-Wolf 01 to all fighters. Change formation from diamond to boomerang. Engage. Begin attack.”
A moment later, 4 spears pierced the building wall and blossomed into large flowers.
“You dumbass! Switch off the monitors!!”
A woman in glasses and a tight skirt shouted while traveling inside a mobile base disguised as a cold storage truck.
As her subordinate was gradually swallowed up by the “effects”, she tightened his tie with one hand to knock him unconscious and she used a lithe leg contained in black panty hose to kick out the power cable and forcibly shut off the machines.
“Bhah!! Pant, pant! Ch-chief, you saved me.”
“You can thank me after taking a psychological test with a counsellor, Inoue. It’s too soon to say whether you’ve really escaped her influence. Tanaka, you watch over him!”
“…What was that?” hesitantly asked the young man.
Everyone silently focused on the woman in a tight skirt. She cleared her throat and answered.
“I don’t know any of the details. There haven’t been any experiments proving that something in the other world can influence ours through the thin barrier between them. But that Break News is a Succubus. That means this must be based on a Charm-style Skill. For example…she might take control of anyone whose heart is taken in by her aura.”
If it was simply something biological like her voice or pheromones, her influence would not reach inside a tank or fighter. But if it had to do with a vague “atmosphere” or “aura”, then she could bind someone’s heart even over the phone or internet. Everyone had experienced that on some level, such as getting excited watching a live soccer match or feeling disgusted by a post on a message board. People’s emotions could be controlled even when the other person was not physically in front of them.
But in that case…
“This isn’t good… We easily outdo do them on the information gathering front, but that’s exactly why her Charm can spread without end. Her contamination will spread throughout the military.”
If only they could use Magic.
But that was not possible at the moment.
“…can…hear me? Someone respond!!”
The tight skirt woman clenched her teeth and listened to a radio transmission separate from the dead monitors.
“This is the Shinjuku Station PB! We’re full up! The trains aren’t running and we’re already over capacity for evacuees! Sending any more here would be dangerous!! Send the evacuees elsewhere! And more importantly, she’s…goddammit, what the hell is that huge-ass squid monster!? It’s more than 10 stories tall! Can someone with Grandnir experience explain this!?”
“You’ve gotta be kidding…”
Soon thereafter, a violent tremor shook the truck. The tight skirt glasses woman made up her mind and brought the monitors back to life.
She saw countless bizarrely shaped creatures crawling on the buildings and elevated train tracks or highways.
“Tselika took in someone with a summoning Job!? Dammit!!”
“Boo Boo.”
“…”
Beatrice called out that name in the rubble-strewn inn town.
Boo Boo was hanging his head.
He had wanted to save the Nun who was having stones thrown at her for no good reason. He had wanted to stop the Religious Society because they were being mean to the Succubus and had even sent in a Break News. He had wanted to rescue a girl who was having her life taken for a purge of Nonhumans instead of to live or to eat. But all those feelings had been betrayed, trampled on, and used against him. He likely felt responsible.
“It’s okay, Boo Boo. There’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“But I can’t go to your world. I can’t help at all.”
He stopped speaking there.
And then he started up again.
“I can’t even stop the Nun.”
Technically, Tselika had not gone to Earth. She was still in Grandnir and only influencing Earth through the thin barrier between worlds, but there was nothing they could do on this side. Just as you could not observe or reach the edge of the ever-expanding universe, the demon would not fall back down anywhere visible as long as Gruagach continued to pull her toward Tokyo through the thin barrier.
“We’ll deal with our own world’s problem on our own. So don’t look so sad, Boo Boo.”
Beatrice gave him a baseless smile but then stopped speaking.
Boo Boo had hugged the slender girl.
He was not calm enough to do it like a pretentious gentleman. The giant Iberian Orc was trembling like a child lost in a strange city. He was afraid.
“I don’t want you to go.”
“…”
“I can’t go with you. I won’t be able to go save you even if you ask for help. I can’t do anything, so someone else has to stop the Nun. I know that, but I’m dumb, so I can’t stop myself from wanting you to stay here.”
What would Beatrice even be able to do?
If she did leave Grandnir and return to Tokyo, she would become a powerless girl. She would be unable to use any Magic at all. Her slender arms could not break a walnut, much less a boulder. She had never used a normal sword or gun. And on top of those physical issues were the political ones. Back in the real world, she was like a bird in a cage and could not take one step outside Roppongi’s Detached Magic Palace.
If there was nothing she could do, it would be best if she did not return.
It would be safer to remain in Grandnir until the commotion had died down.
The more she thought about it, the more hopeless any kind of attempt seemed.
But.
He had said nothing bad would happen if they all got along. That Nun would have been a part of that.
Beatrice nearly fell into self-loathing when she found herself thinking about her own safety while Boo Boo looked on the verge of tears.
So she threw out all of those boring assumptions before she started hating herself.
“Boo Boo.”
She threw out the vague smile.
That was not what she needed to calm his trembling.
“Don’t worry, Boo Boo. There’s still something you can do.”
“?”
“Surface level niceties don’t matter. I trust that we truly understand each other’s hearts. So let’s speak frankly here. That way we can eliminate the weight hanging between us.”
“Right. I trust you too.”
Boo Boo rubbed his eyes and nodded several times.
Beatrice wished he was not 4 meters tall so she could reach his head.
“Boo Boo, it is true that we are partially responsible for this. I won’t say all responsibility lies with us, but we did lay out the fuse leading to the bomb. But make no mistake. There is still something we can do instead of letting that responsibility crush us.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I’ll be returning to the other side. You were right that you can’t go to Tokyo, but there is something you can do here in Grandnir. Are you willing to hear me out?”
This went beyond just protecting Tokyo or Japan.
It was about Boo Boo.
She would protect that kind Iberian Orcs’ soul. She would save him.
This would come with its own risks. And these risks filled her gut with far more tension than the formless ideas of the world or humankind.
She would bet her life on this fight. For his sake.
“Okay, are you listening, Boo Boo?”
In the Detached Magic Palace of Roppongi, Tokyo, a girl in a red dress Signed Out through her exclusive Gate and saw several thin contrails cutting across the blue sky. That was probably a formation of JSDF fighters. She prayed it was not some missiles fired into the city from an American submarine.
She then spotted a small maid waiting near the gazebo in the large garden. If she could see the maid, the maid could see her, so this was no time to be sneaking around. She walked boldly up to the maid and placed her hands on the small girl’s shoulders.
And she asked a question at extreme close range.
“Haruka, we’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Uuh, I really don’t want to be friends with someone who starts a conversation like that…”
“Don’t worry. I won’t ask you to do anything dangerous. In fact, you don’t have to do anything at all. I want you to overlook something.”
“?”
The maid tilted her head in confusion, so the twintail girl inhaled and exhaled.
Her heart was pounding.
But she still said it.
“I’m about to break out of the Detached Magic Palace, but I want you to keep quiet about-…”
“Ugyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!”
The maid screamed before she could even finish making her request.
This maid was not worthy of friendship. The girl pouted her lips as the oldest sister Iroka and second sister Misoka arrived to see what was going on.
The smallest maid’s mouth flapped open and closed as she pointed at her master’s face and did her best to make a report and share her information.
“U-u-umm! Milady is…try…trying to…she said she’s trying to leave the Detached Magic Palace on her own!!”
As the small one’s voice jumped all over the place, the medium and large ones rubbed their finger against their temple.
Iroka, the glasses tutor and the maid with the biggest chest, winked and asked a question.
“Does this have anything to do with the contrails overhead?”
“Exactly. It couldn’t have more to do with it.”
Misoka, the sporty second sister who handled the heavy lifting during the cleaning and garden work, spoke next.
“Is there any reason you have to deal with this yourself, lady?”
“It is true that I don’t have a grand reason such as stopping a world war fought over the Pieces. But I want to do whatever I can to protect someone important to me who is feeling depressed back in Grandnir because of how responsible he feels about all this. He wanted to save the Nun from having her life lost in a purge that was entirely unnecessary to live or to eat. He wanted to get along with everyone. But his feelings were trampled on and he can’t save her since he can’t leave that world. There might be 7 billion other people in this world, but I’m the only one that can save his soul here.”
“I see.”
The maids looked at their master’s face with an appraising look.
They were charged with taking care of the dress girl and keeping her in top condition, but the Information Broker also had them report on any hint of coming danger and use force if necessary to swiftly stop any attempted “jailbreak”.
…Officially, anyway.
“Very well, we will accept this job.”
“A sheltered girl like you wouldn’t know, lady, but Tokyo is a dangerous city. Especially for pretty girls like you. You will need some bodyguards.”
The red dress girl’s eyes widened.
Even Haruka, who had loudly betrayed her, clenched her small fists and gave a snort.
“That’s right! You mustn’t even think about going out on your own!! If you’re leaving, you need to take us with you!!”
“…”
The black twintail girl was utterly shocked.
She and the 3 maids had been having different arguments the whole time.
“U-um, are you sure about that? Given your position and all…”
“Miss, no one stands in a more dangerous position than you. So we must also accept some risk.”
Iroka, the biggest maid, crossed her arms and lifted her ample breasts from below.
“And I liked that you mentioned someone important to you. Yes, I liked it very much. You have been imprisoned in this birdcage for the convenience of the nation…no, the world. You could have held a grudge against the entire world for that, but you still managed to find someone important to you. I won’t let the Information Broker crush that underfoot.”
The report reached the Ushigashira Shrine in Akasaka, Tokyo, almost immediately.
The coke bottle glasses shrine maiden with fluffy blonde hair tied in a long tube shape went pale, but she did not have time to feel faint. She scrambled out of the Dragon Palace Chamber.
The voice in the attic spoke to her like normal.
“Where are you going, stupid girl?”
“We can give the title of ‘stupid’ to Beatrice. She’s…that complete idiot! I don’t know if this is for Boo Boo or what, but why doesn’t she know this will only place the noose around her own neck? She might never be able to go back to Grandnir!!”
“The same goes for you. Do not forget your Ushigashira duty. Your job is to-…”
“Oh, shut up, you old hag!! A good friend I’m willing to entrust my life to is prepared to throw out her entire life here! How can I just follow the rules and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch!?”
“…”
Silence followed.
But it lacked the tension of a silent elevator. It was a somehow soft and gentle atmosphere.
“Then head outside and stop by the 4th storeroom. The key to the basement is inside one of the temari balls in the kid’s room. The one that rattles when you shake it.”
“?”
She did as instructed and felt like she had wandered outside of Japan.
It was like a collection in a movie. Every wall was covered in cutting-edge firearms. There were also plenty of bulletproof vests, gasmasks, and grenades of various types. It was a major problem that a historical shrine had this hidden below it. It could easily turn into a scandal.
“Wh-why is all this here?”
Weapons had originally been stored below the shrine after the end of World War Two so they could put up a thorough resistance if the American military tried to pillage the shrine’s valuable cultural assets and that collection had been continually updated as time passed, but the old lady’s voice gave an immediate answer that elided all of that lengthy tradition.
“It must have been prepared for this very day.”
The fallen star student – or rather, translucent Tselika who indirectly controlled her through the armor binding her – had known her destination from the beginning.
“Ebisu 1-3 Sakuradai Kubancho Minamigasaki 8-4. Hmm, as I thought, it isn’t in this girl’s knowledge. I’ll just have to hope for a general idea…”
Black smoke and dust blew from the frontline where Tselika spoke in an almost carefree tone with her angel halo, devil horns, scale swimsuit, and thick snake hagoromo.
The area was a complete disaster zone.
An explosion had blasted a tank’s turret straight up. An armored truck had broken through the ground and fallen into the subway station. An attack helicopter had pierced a building wall while its rotor continued to spin fruitlessly. After the pilot ejected, a fighter pinwheeled through the sky while spewing explosive flames.
The foot soldiers had fared no better.
Just like a losing army, a look in the alleyways would likely find men who had frantically stripped off their camouflage uniforms. Needless to say, they were trying to escape harm by blending in with the civilians.
And if they were doing that, there was no need to deal with them.
They were not even worth taking in with her Charm.
She was using the Summon Hunter’s power to send out a variety of creatures, but once they lost sight of their target, the started fighting each other for control of this territory. A one-eyed giant known as a Cyclops and a slithering multi-headed dragon known as a Typhon were clashing between 5-story buildings that matched their height. They were the same as Tselika. They were interfering in Tokyo because Gruagach allowed them to push their power against the other side of the thin layer between worlds.
Tselika thought to herself as she sent Gruagach below the arch created by fighting monsters.
(It would probably be about 50/50 if they sent in fully program-controlled drones, but it looks like they want to have a human cushion in place to avoid malfunctions. That makes it easy to control them. My Charm can contaminate hearts even through relayed messages and letters. It doesn’t matter if I am actually there or not.)
Goat-horned Tselika’s modern knowledge was based on that of star student Gruagach, so it was biased in certain directions. She did not find much about the military, but she was surprised to find a lot of reference material in entertainment movies when it came to unmanned weapons. It took guts to rely on that when one’s life was on the line. Tselika had to grimace.
“Cars, trains… They seem to have a lot of convenient systems built up, but it looks like both of those have been stopped. I suppose walking will be my best option.”
Tselika was using a borrowed body, so she only cared that it lasted long enough to achieve her goal. Muscular exhaustion was of no concern to her. When a three-headed guard dog known as a Cerberus and a fertility snake woman known as an Echidna bared their fangs against Gruagach, Tselika used the sacrifice’s fists to beat them down before continuing her march.
More and more creatures were summoned everywhere within 200 meters around them: behind vending machines, below cars, inside manholes, etc. Some of them ignored the road altogether and appeared inside the buildings and behind barricades. Some even surrounded Tselika as if to curse her.
But the demon did not care.
The Grandnir monsters were indeed powerful, but they were still no match for Tselika.
That was just how powerful the cultural fire known as Magic was.
Meanwhile…
“?”
With a loud screech of tires on asphalt (a noise Tselika was quickly growing accustomed to), a cold storage truck came to a rapid stop a short distance away. The rear door opened and someone stepped out. It was a glasses woman with her long hair tied back whose tight suit had the necktie removed. She looked different, but Tselika still recognized her. Translucent Tselika scoffed and named the woman while embracing the drooling and unfocused star student.
“Armelina, huh?”
“You have good eyes. So you know what kind of fighting style I prefer, right?”
A heavy sound followed.
A metal ball the size of a balance ball was attached to a thick chain. It should have been far too heavy for the woman’s slender arms to support, but she lightly tossed it up with a single arm and caught it like it was made of rubber.
“I’m a Fighter Priest. I might rely on Magic, but the basic element is physical force. …So if I can use other means to reproduce the physical support the Magic provides, it isn’t hard to recreate my Grandnir fighting style back here in the real world.”
In this case, she wore a reinforcing suit that was expected to assist in construction, nursing, agriculture, and the military.
It was primarily located around her hips, but robot arms seemed to crawl out onto her bare arms and legs. This representative smart tool was rumored to allow someone to carry several times or even several dozen times as much weight as a normal person.
She would also sometimes summon a Magic metal ball that absorbed the destroyed rubble to increase its attack power with each swing, but that was easily recreated with a metal ball and a tank of instant glue.
“That’s why I was known as a bizarre level cap adventurer, but it looks like that title’s been stolen from me. Now that I’ve been robbed of the belt, I’ve got to take it back.”
Several men and women in suits left the cold storage truck.
They all held identical metal balls and thick chains to the glasses woman known as Armelina.
“I’ll be taking it back with me and they’ll show what the mass-produced model can do. What would we do without the Ministry of Defense’s tech lab? This is human strength. If we monopolize the technology, its value rises. If we release it, everyone can do the same thing. It all comes down to how you use it.”
“Heh heh.”
Translucent Tselika traced her fingers across the star student’s bodylines as she laughed.
She ignored the monsters fighting each other nearby and she kept Armelina in the center of her vision.
“That is impressive. It is an approach not found in this girl’s knowledge. You could even say the atmosphere here belongs to you. …But have you forgotten? Gruagach the fallen student is still wearing this Shining Weapon armor. And it is still armor rather than a USB key. That means she has truly brought Magic here. So she can use Command-type attack Magic of any Element she wants.”
A sticky sound came from Gruagach’s feet.
Several tentacles thicker than anacondas stretched out from her shadow. They crawled up her bare legs, wrapped around her thighs, and attempted to violate her entire body.
All of a sudden, she held a Western-style bow with a stabilizer and with a knife on either end.
Yes, this was a 2nd Shining Weapon.
The armor and bow made 2. The translucent demon ignored all of the rules as she controlled her puppet and pierced the crawling tentacles with the bow’s lower knife. The thick, thick tentacles left some stickiness on Gruagach’s thighs as they were absorbed by the manmade object. The bowstring wriggled creepily and was drawn.
If she nocked an arrow, the wriggling tentacles would be transferred to that like an infection.
The bizarre monster would be contained inside the arrowhead as if sealing a poison or an explosive inside.
Gruagach was a Summon Hunter.
That rare Job allowed her to call up any Grandnir Nonhuman she had made a contract with and either make it fight for her or seal it in her blade to transform the weapon’s effects.
Tselika laughed as she viewed the eerily pulsating arrowhead and the tentacle tips that occasionally jutted out.
“A Scylla, hm? Not bad. This arrowhead will swim freely through the air upon its release, its 12 legs will entangle the target, and their viselike grip can crush even a steel pillar. But you are about to discover that firsthand, Armelina.”
“…That Shining Weapon.”
“The armor is the one in control. The arrow is a slave device, or maybe more like an extra option. But as you can plainly see, these are not built to show any concern for the bearer’s personality.”
As the translucent demon embraced the star student from behind, she buried her face in the girl’s nape. When the demon’s lips touched her neck, a glowing emblem of unknown effect spread across her skin.
Gruagach had already shown no sign of resistance, but now the last shreds of her will vanished from her fingers.
Now that she had become a true puppet, the mass of soft skin raised the bow.
The stabilizer-equipped bow accurately targeted its prey.
“Now, I will reclaim the atmosphere here in an instant. And you will become yet another puppet. Think carefully about what it is you wanted to protect enough to stand in my way like this. That is the list of what you are about to lose.”
“Hah.”
The tight suit and black panty hose woman laughed quietly with the metal ball in hand.
She belonged to an external sector that left no official records by acting as a private detective agency that gathered retired police officers and JSDF officers. She understood the value of information, so she did not speak her actual thoughts in front of her enemy.
There was never a 100% chance of victory in battle. But she had accepted that risk. She had received a report from Roppongi’s Detached Magic Palace. She knew a certain girl was plotting something, so she needed nothing more. This was worth it if she could buy some time and increase that girl’s odds of success.
That was valuable information, so the glasses woman smiled and spoke to hide it.
“Let’s go, little girl. I just wish you could lend me that Charm Skill of yours.”
“?”
She swung the metal ball around by its thick chain.
This was an undeniable hostile act. The heavy metal ball dully and gradually picked up speed like it was rolling down a hill.
“I have a pretty rough job, so I haven’t exactly been blessed in the romance department. I thought I might still have a faint chance left in Grandnir, but then this trouble had to crop up. I’ll teach you not to underestimate a human woman’s grudge!!”
