"—Check if his heart is still beating!"
Instinct—the impulse that drove Subaru forward—originated from that.
He had no certainty, no proof. He simply dared to think it wasn't meaningless.
Sin Archbishops. The name of a star.
If they had left their mark on this world, and that mark was also carved into the
If
That was why Subaru raised his voice, hoping desperately that it wasn't all unrelated.
It happened right after.
"—!"
A dense, oppressive force surged forth, and Subaru experienced the illusion of losing all sense of direction.
The air had become visibly murky. It was a kind of indescribable discomfort—an abhorrence.
The revulsion of having a scab torn off carelessly, the displeasure of having foul breath breathed into one's face, the horror of having one's bare skin licked by a viscous tongue.
The source of that thoroughly muddied presence was the white-haired fiend who had turned to face them.
The instant their eyes met, Subaru's body trembled involuntarily.
Those empty, expressionless eyes pierced into Subaru's heart as if they were a curse. The sensation of being clawed at and torn by a rusted needle made him feel as though his lungs and even his heart had frozen in terror.
But even as Subaru stiffened with those feelings— "Don't look away! Your opponent is me!"
Turning toward Subaru was, in effect, turning his back on the Sword Saint standing before him.
The hands raised by Reinhard gripped what could only have been a broken signboard and scrap iron lying nearby—objects destined to end their existence as mere non-combustibles. Yet Reinhard's arms sublimated them into weapons inferior to no legendary blade.
The blade hurtling through the air struck diagonally at the back of Regulus's tuxedo.
The shockwave that erupted spread through space, followed by the scream of the atmosphere that only then realized it had been sliced, and the water of the great canal—once covered in a thin sheet of ice—swirled upward in spray.
That was merely the aftershock of a sword strike. It would have been no surprise if the fiend had been blown to smithereens.
However, it was still not quite enough.
"Don't get the wrong idea, Sword Saint. The reason I was toying with you was because of my own magnanimity and composure. But even the kind me has limits, you know."
"—!"
Brushing off the strike to his back with a light shrug, Regulus tilted his head.
That gesture put Reinhard on alert. Tossing aside the fragments crumbling within his arms, Reinhard leaped far backward— —or tried to. His feet stopped.
Reinhard's heightened perception.
The extraordinary intuition that preemptively detected approaching threats and all manner of attacks. That razor-sharp sense refused to permit a retreat to the rear. He immediately tried to find another option, and his bending knees froze.
"The air in this entire area has already been touched by me."
His overly keen senses produced paralysis, and in this instant, Reinhard was defenseless.
Behind him—no, surrounding him—there existed invisible traps. Reinhard's judgment was to press forward and slip past the fiend's side, but to do so, he needed a feint.
"Tch!"
The strike he launched was originally imbued with enough sharpness to pierce even stone.
The hilt of the dragon sword drove into Regulus's chest, but the fiend received it with a calm expression— "Pointless effort, my condolences. You'd better pray that the wounds aren't too severe."
"It seems Subaru was right... your heart isn't beating here."
"—?!"
Regulus's smug smile froze, and he looked down at his own chest.
There, the sword's hilt still remained. Reinhard had spread his nerves to their utmost, straining to catch even the faintest heartbeat from that spot.
Realizing he'd been duped, the enraged Regulus's leg shot forward.
The direct hit—it was like a replay of the previous scene.
He met the approaching claw-tip with the dragon sword's scabbard, and Reinhard's body was blasted backward without even being able to disperse the impact. However, what followed from here was different.
"Reinhard!!"
True to his declaration, Regulus's breath-formed traps lay in countless numbers behind Reinhard.
What would happen if he flew into that unguarded—the result was plain to see.
Reinhard's white attire was stained red, and his tall body was torn apart as it flew through the air. How much he had managed to mitigate his injuries, one couldn't track as he once again crashed into the ruins, expanding the city's destruction with his body.
All that was certain was that Reinhard had answered Subaru's request.
"You did great, Reinhard...!"
"Subaru!"
"It's fine. Reinhard is probably fine! We can worry about him later!"
"I know that! What am I supposed to do?"
Subaru was caught off guard by
That came from trust in Reinhard's strength, and perhaps also trust in Subaru.
"Reinhard believed in you too, which is why he took on something that reckless. You figured out something about Regulus, didn't you? Tell me."
Trust was heavy. Expectations were heavy. The weight of being believed in was heavy, and that was what made him want to act.
He owed Reinhard too. He'd make sure to pick up his bones later.
"How about the two of you put on a nice, easy-to-understand display of despair? You've angered me with your atrocious and despicable acts, and aren't you in a position where you must receive punishment? That's how it is, right? That's how it'll end up, isn't it? Adultery and treachery—both are capital crimes deserving of ten thousand deaths."
Regulus kicked Reinhard away, and with the nuisance removed, he let out a giggle.
The demonic aura of the fiend facing them across the canal only swelled further. Truth be told, Subaru would have preferred not to keep staring him down like this.
But running away here would make everything meaningless.
"To cast suspicions of adultery on the purest heroine since the start of this century—that really makes you the scumbag here, you idiot."
"Huh?"
"I know you've been rattling off things to make yourself sound scary, but you're the one who needs to use that empty head of yours a little."
At Subaru's suddenly bold declaration, Regulus's eyes went wide.
Subaru tapped his own head with his finger in an exaggerated manner and said— "I don't know how well you've surfed through life's waves up to now, and I don't want to know, but... have you realized it? You're being cornered right now."
"Cornered? I can't even laugh at that, it makes so little sense. What exactly are you trying to say? Well, there's a chance I might not even have the linguistic capability to understand whatever it is you're trying to communicate, so there's really no need to say anything if there's nothing to say."
"Well, don't be like that—listen. You have the right to hear it. Your favorite thing—rights."
"My... rights?"
Regulus furrowed his brow, and Subaru crafted a smile that was half flippancy and half mockery. Then, continuing with "Ah, well, of course"— "Because losing without knowing how you lost would leave a bitter aftertaste, wouldn't it?"
"—Just disappear already!!"
That shrug became the trigger, and Regulus's body launched from the canal's edge. His jumping power wasn't sufficient, and his body hit the water's surface. However, once submerged, his body was completely unaffected by the water's resistance, and he launched upward as if neither water nor anything else existed.
Confirming the submerged action up close, Subaru slapped Emilia's shoulder.
"Emilia, now!"
"Ul Huma!"
Responding to Subaru's cue, Emilia released the magic power she had been channeling as pillars of ice.
Enormous ice lances—large enough to look up at—rained down toward Regulus, piercing into the water around him as he surfaced and forming a cage of ice.
"I wondered what you'd do, but it seems you'll never learn no matter how many times I show you that it's useless! What, have you given up? Are you really so lacking in intellect that you sit there arrogantly, thinking you can impose the same pointless effort on others from your high horse? Don't get ahead of yourself, you defective thing!"
Regulus bared his teeth as he mowed down the ice cage, stomped through it, and with overwhelming force crushed it to powder. Like crumbling a wall of sand, Emilia's full-power ice prison was returned to mana.
But that was fine. That was enough.
"No good—it really can't even buy us time."
"That's not it, Emilia-tan."
Subaru shook his head at Emilia, whose expression darkened at the realization that her power was ineffective.
It was a difference in perspective. Subaru's objective was fully achieved by that.
"With his spiteful personality, he can't feel satisfied unless he's trampling someone underfoot and looking down on them. Even obstacles he doesn't need to destroy—he doesn't feel like he's truly won unless he steps over them."
Regulus, who proclaimed his own completeness and boasted of his fulfillment.
His mental turmoil, his petty vanity, his swollen ego—all as visible as could be.
"In principle, he doesn't need to do anything special to overcome obstacles. He doesn't need to, yet he takes one extra action. Even if it's just one second, one millisecond—that's progress."
"With that one second, can you beat Regulus?"
"Stack them up, and I'll make you win. I'll peel off that monstrous mask of his."
The groundwork for that had been laid by Reinhard.
He had confirmed Regulus's heartbeat—or rather, confirmed the absence of one—and communicated that to Subaru.
No warmth emanated, no heartbeat was present, no breath was drawn, and he was unaffected by his surroundings.
It was certainly "invincibility," but its essence was not "invincibility."
"Emilia! This way!"
Subaru pulled Emilia by the arm, and together they sprinted through the cratered streets. Matching Subaru's pace, Emilia fired ice pillars at Regulus over her shoulder as she ran.
Regulus, seeing the fleeing pair, chased after them with an expression of ever-growing rage.
"You talked so big! What do you mean by running away?! You called me a fool, said you had me cornered, and now you're going to mock me from every angle—who do you think you are?! You coward!"
Since his physical abilities weren't that impressive, Regulus's pursuit speed wasn't much different from Subaru's running speed. In fact, he was slower.
However, blessed with an Authority that never ran out of stamina, the fiend sprinting at full power would eventually catch up.
"Subaru! Where are we going?!"
"The cathedral! The goal is Regulus's bride! In there..."
Subaru answered Emilia's call, his voice cracking as he did.
Glancing back briefly as he spoke— "—Don't figure out anything unnecessary, you hear me?"
"Oh—huh?!"
The distance from moments ago had vanished without a trace. Regulus appeared right before Subaru's eyes.
The fiend had closed the gap in a single leap, and Subaru barely ducked his head to avoid the palm strike. He felt the back of his hair get swept away as he pulled Emilia close, pressed against the adjacent wall, launched himself upward, and scaled the wall in one go.
"W-wow, Subaru, you're amazing!"
"Emilia-tan, just hold on tight!"
Emilia's eyes went wide at Subaru's acrobatics, and her arms wrapped around his neck while her legs encircled his waist. She was soft and smelled nice. His motivation surged. He planted his foothold and pushed over the wall.
His parkour training was paying off. Just like this, he'd keep his distance— "That's exactly why efforts to fill in the gaps of a mediocre person's mediocrity are pointless."
As he spoke, Regulus ran his palm along the base of the wall Subaru was scaling.
A heavy, grinding sound like a millstone rang out, and the stone wall was gouged away as easily as if it were tofu. The wall lost its support and collapsed. Naturally, Subaru and Emilia, who had been clinging to it, fell with it.
"Whoa—dammit!"
Mid-fall, Subaru pulled his whip free and flung it upward with no particular target. The tip caught on something, and he used all his strength to haul their bodies up.
He swung his feet, and the instant his soles touched the wall, he kicked hard. Using the centrifugal force of the whip's recoil to twist their bodies further, Subaru achieved a remarkable climb while holding Emilia.
What they arrived at was a warehouse that had lost roughly half its floor.
Slumping onto the lookout post that jutted from the roof, Subaru looked at his palms.
"Whoa—I actually pulled off some insane strength there...!"
"Subaru! Anyway, we just need to reach the cathedral, right?! Which direction?!"
Pitifully examining his peeled and scraped palms, Subaru looked around at Emilia's voice. Fortunately, the height of the lookout post and Regulus's handiwork provided an excellent view of the surroundings.
In the distance, he could see the wreckage of what appeared to be the cathedral, collapsed from Reinhard's first strike. They had somehow gotten quite far away— "This is bad! We ran in the wrong direction! What do we do?!"
"That way, right?"
"That way, yes, but how do we—"
"I'll do this!"
Emilia clapped her hands at Subaru's reply, and immediately an ice bridge was formed from the lookout post.
Draped in a mysterious pale blue glow, the bridge extended from the lookout post as its starting point, creating a large shortcut through the air all the way to the street leading to the cathedral.
"What the—?!"
Looking up at the ice bridge, Regulus—who had been bracing for the two to fall—was taken aback too. Subaru clapped in admiration at Emilia's judgment to solve the problem with brute force, then stood and set foot on the stairs leading to the ice bridge.
But from directly below, the fiend disrupted their escape.
"I'm not letting you go!!"
Regulus circled beneath the ice bridge and hurled a stone at it. The hastily constructed bridge took a devastating blow from that single strike, and cracks immediately raced across its entire surface.
It crumbled from the worst-hit sections, and the bridge pitifully transformed into fragments of crystal light. Watching this, Regulus laughed cruelly.
But— "The real one is over here, so it's fine if the bridge gets destroyed!"
"—What?!"
Riding atop the ice pillar Emilia had launched, Subaru and Emilia glided over the shower of crumbling, chaotic light.
Using the bridge's slope as a launch pad, they flew with the technique of a ski jump, leaping over the canal, over the streets, leaving Regulus behind as they headed for the cathedral.
"Emilia-tan, you've gotten clever!"
"Maybe I caught it from you, Subaru."
"That phrasing isn't really a compliment, you know!"
Regulus did have long-range means of attack, but they were limited to the reach of his shoulders.
Subaru narrowed his eyes, glaring at the approaching cathedral in the distance while keeping the rage-contorted Regulus at a distance.
"When you meet the women in the cathedral, what will you do?"
"I don't know if they're being threatened or if they're devout followers, but..."
To Emilia's question, Subaru touched his chin and paused.
What surfaced in his mind were the women in the cathedral who had trembled at Regulus's actions. He fervently wished that the terror on their faces at that time was genuine, not an act.
If it wasn't— "We'd be forced to take his heart, willing or not. —In the most literal sense."
Bathed in wind, the ice pillar descended in altitude as the cathedral loomed ever closer.
Behind them was Regulus. Reinhard's safety was unknown. A faint chance of victory was visible, yet the crisis continued— Were the others doing well?
He had no luxury to think about that, and yet he couldn't help but wonder.
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ The battle for the "Gluttony" sector at the control tower's front plaza—
"—El Clauser."
Drawing on the power of the six-colored lesser spirits, a rainbow radiance was unleashed from the tip of the knight's sword he thrust forward.
Delivered as a preemptive strike, this was a finishing blow holding nothing back.
"Clauser" was a magical technique of the same school as "Clariel"—the very technique that had inflicted damage on Petelgeuse's actual body. While "Clariel" wrapped a sword in destructive aurora, "Clauser" was a long-range offensive technique that fired destructive aurora from the sword's tip.
The impression of the Sin Archbishop that lingered in Julius's mind was, as always, strongest from Petelgeuse.
The emotions Julius harbored toward the madman who was the Sin Archbishop of "Sloth" were those toward a great criminal who had tormented the world for years, but also—toward a being of an entirely different mode of thought, an unknowable foreign enemy.
Julius Juukulius, heralded as the "preeminent knight," often gave the impression of being aloof from his manner and words, but in truth he possessed the naivety of believing in humanity's inherent goodness.
He believed that every person's actions had reasons, and that the causes of evil acts involved environmental influences beyond the perpetrator alone—there were aspects that were simply too soft-hearted from a humanitarian perspective.
Even Julius, however, found the Sin Archbishop Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti and the puppet-like Witch Cult members to be beyond his comprehension.
Enemies so incomprehensible that even the effort to understand them could be forgiven as abandoned.
For Julius, the Witch Cult was the worst malice that threatened even his sense of "knighthood."
Hence, his trump card. Hence, his hidden ace.
From the very first move, Julius had not hesitated to play his strongest card.
The super-technique of borrowing the power of six lesser spirits and simultaneously wielding six colors of magical power.
Not even the slightest variation in mana quantity was permitted. It required the bond between a spirit arts user and his lesser spirits, combined with the singular genius, talent, and effort that was Julius, to be realized.
Not even
On first encounter, one would not comprehend the terror of this magic—and would be obliterated without ever understanding it.
Rather than investigating the source of the lump that certainly remained in his own chest, Julius prioritized eradicating the very root of that wrongness.
The destructive aurora peeled up the cobblestones and painted over the small figure who had been hanging both arms limply.
The dark brown long hair, the filthy rags, the dull gleam of a short sword—all swallowed by the rainbow— "My brother is actually surprisingly weak when it comes to turning a blind eye to unpleasant things, you know?"
"—What!?"
With a voice that could be heard from this side too, Alphard's body collapsed to the ground. The blasphemer kicked off the earth in a posture so low he was nearly crawling, sticking out his long tongue.
The speed of the released aurora, while not reaching the speed of light, was by no means slow. To dodge a surprise attack approaching at arrow-like speed would require physical abilities rivaling Reinhard's, or— "You were our ideal, you know, brother. The secret technique you worked so hard to develop while hiding your effort from others—there was no way we wouldn't know about it!"
"What are you talking about?!"
"How can you say you don't know? That's truly heartless of you, brother Julius. But we love that about you! Ahahahaha!"
As if knowing the trump card would be unleashed, Alphard bounced across the ground to dodge the magic. Following the mana, Ricardo had started running to strike the fleeing Alphard—but Alphard's evasion accounted for even that pursuit.
The short sword spun, and sparks flew as it clashed head-on with the cleaver Ricardo swung downward. In raw strength, Ricardo was overwhelmingly superior. Alphard deflected that difference in power with swordsmanship of unimaginable finesse. The cleaver slid past the blasphemer's side, and the cobblestones shattered.
Simultaneously, Alphard's slash carved across Ricardo's fur-covered torso.
"There—a stab for the dog meat! Tough, sinewy meat—you gotta stab it all over and over to tenderize it, make it easier to chew, easy on the stomach, easy to turn into shit, easy to turn into fertilizer, easy to turn into veggies, which get eaten by meat, and the cycle goes round and round and round—food chain! Ah, what a magnificent thing!!"
"Ugh—gah—guh?!"
Rattling off gibberish at a rapid clip, Alphard wielded the short swords strapped to both arms at an inhuman speed. Despite a body that hadn't even finished growing and muscles that were barely trained, his physical capabilities—far beyond what his appearance suggested—tore through Ricardo's body as it tried to defend.
"Ricardo!!"
Needle-like fur and thick muscle. Compared to a human, Ricardo's body was like a walking suit of armor, yet before Alphard's attacks, it suffered wounds with nothing he could do.
Julius's eyes went wide as he stared at the bleeding Ricardo in disbelief.
Each of Alphard's high-speed attacks precisely targeted the thinnest patches of fur and the joint areas. No matter how tough Ricardo might be, having vital points struck meant injury, blood loss, and even loss of life.
"—!"
The instant he saw the first attack miss its mark, Julius cut off his bombardment and recalled the lesser spirits. He commanded two spirits—the 'Fire'-attribute Ia and the 'Wind'-attribute Aro—to wrap flame and wind around his sword in a blazing slash. A scarlet flame-accompanied slash flew toward Alphard from the flank.
"Yes, we knew that pattern too!"
"What?!"
"That surprise is so unoriginal! It wouldn't even count as an appetizer!"
Yet Alphard deflected this easily too, catching it on one arm with the precision of someone who had eyes in the back of his head, before driving a kick into Julius's exposed torso.
The kick pierced through to Julius's abdominals, and he folded in half with a groan of pain. On the front line, Ricardo's counterattack was dodged, and Alphard's toes struck upward into his jaw.
"Nice, nice—it's getting fun! Fighting you, brother! Fighting you, Ricardo! Two against one and we're holding our own! Things we could absolutely never do, too far for us to reach, things we could never see, never know—we'd given up on ever being in that kind of place! Ah! Something this fun—it's unfair, it's unfair, it's so unfair!"
Julius and Ricardo both dropped to one knee simultaneously. Alphard, taunting the two of them, loosened his pursuit and performed backflips across the cobblestones.
The sight of him bouncing across the cobblestones with a bright, cheerful expression was that of a child befitting his appearance.
If you disregarded his impossible skill and his innocent cruelty.
"You can't reason with 'em, obviously. But damn, that guy's unsettling. The way he talks, the way he says things—everything about him is creepy!"
Ricardo, nursing shallow wounds across his body and breathing hard, grumbled while licking a wound on his arm. Julius, who had risen to his feet while steadying his breathing, shared Ricardo's frustration.
"It's the same as back at the city hall... no, it's even more incomprehensible than that. He may be trying to confuse us, but it's only backfiring."
"And yet, the type to be bothered by it is the good-hearted Ricardo, and brother who's secretly good-hearted too! We see right through you!"
"You—"
Alphard clapped his hands and cackled. Julius sent the 'Water'-attribute lesser spirit Qua beneath Ricardo, performing basic treatment on his wounds, before stepping forward.
"Hey! Don't you go pulling ahead, Julius!"
"You stay there and quietly let the bleeding stop!"
Raising his knight's sword before him, Julius charged at Alphard. But his speed of advance was clearly different from before.
The sharp lunge and slash made Alphard raise an eyebrow lightly upon receiving the first blow.
"This is..."
"The power of the 'Yang' lesser spirit, In. And at the same time—"
"Hm?"
Alphard's confusion overlapped with Julius's response.
Pressing the stiffened blasphemer back in the blade lock, Julius's long leg shot up and slammed into Alphard's temple. This time the defense was too slow. His arms, which rose too late, drooped, and Alphard tumbled desperately to escape.
"Whoa! That was... huh?"
"I have the 'Yang' lesser spirit. In the blade lock, you faced the 'Yin' lesser spirit. They mutually enhance and diminish each other's physical abilities in coordination. This is a first for you, isn't it?"
"...Oh my, how impressive! Lord Julius is wonderful! We still have so many charms that even we don't know about, don't we!"
"—?!"
Blushing, Alphard gazed at Julius with intoxicated eyes.
The instant Julius grimaced at that fervent gaze, Alphard unstrapped the short swords from his arms and discarded them. A high-pitched sound rang out as they struck the cobblestones.
Immediately after, his heel shattered the cobblestones.
"Since swords can't seem to surprise you, this time we'll show you a fist!"
"Gu—!"
In the blink of an eye, Alphard closed the distance, twisting his waist as he threw a palm strike. Julius reflexively blocked it with his free left arm, but the impact punched through arm and torso.
The footwork into the ground and the twist of the waist added incomprehensible destructive force to the palm strike, and Julius's slender frame was launched without exaggeration as if he'd been flattened.
If Subaru had witnessed that scene, he would have thought of a car accident.
The violent spectacle of an unbraking, careening vehicle smashing into a defenseless person.
"These fists reserved for pretty boys—fists that have killed eighty-eight people. Did they resonate deep in brother's very bones?"
At Alphard's manic smile, Julius had no capacity to respond.
His breastbone creaked, his organs were crushed, and he spat out a clot of blood as his tall body was blown away. The one who caught him in time was Ricardo, who had been receiving treatment.
"Julius, no good!!"
Ricardo caught Julius just as he was about to crash headfirst into a wall in his defenseless state, shielding him with his own body. The impact consumed even the dog-man's massive frame, and both of them smashed through the stone and were embedded into the building.
Amid the billowing dust and smoke, Ricardo shook his head and rushed to Julius. He turned the blood-spilling head to the side, ensuring the throat wasn't blocked, and let him cough out the blood.
"Spirits! I don't know if you can hear me, but your master's in a pinch! Hang in there! Don't worry about me—worry about him!"
Perhaps Ricardo's desperate call reached them—the blue light poured its power into Julius's body. The deathly pallor drained from the coughing Julius, and Ricardo, relieved only for a moment, shouldered his great cleaver and rushed outside in a panic.
"Welcome back! Shall we have dinner? A feast? Or maybe—sev-en courses?"
"Grinning like that, you little brat... Let me teach you what happens when you mock adults. I'll spank you just like I do my own runts!"
"No no no, let's stop. We don't have any interest in getting hot and bothered over a dog face. If you're not satisfied with sword and fists, how about something like this?"
Alphard spread his arms with a thin smile, and Ricardo's body hair stood on end. He stared in alarm, then grit his teeth in frustration.
—Behind Alphard, the canal water had risen in a swirling vortex, arching like a dragon's neck to look down upon Ricardo.
"Swordsmanship, martial arts, and now magic. What the hell are you?!"
"We're just humble, nameless mages—embarrassments to our families! Just kidding!"
The instant Alphard stuck out his tongue, the head of the water current crashed down upon Ricardo.
Water it might have been, but its force and mass could easily crush a living creature's body. With Julius behind him, there was no option to dodge.
"I'll do it. Ha—HAH!!"
Ricardo slammed his great cleaver into the ground to anchor his body, opened his mouth wide, and released a roar wave.
An original technique created by two of the three siblings who were vice-commanders of the "
However, compared to the version used by Mimi and the others, which distributed the blast across multiple mouths to reduce the strain, performing it solo placed far greater burden on the body.
Feeling his body groan as he clung to the great cleaver, Ricardo detonated a destructive vibration from his throat and met the rushing torrent head-on.
"Whoa, impressive."
Even before the exclamation of awe could be fully heard, Ricardo's roar wave collided with the torrent.
The wave hammered the water spray head-on, and several tons of weight were dispersed into mist and evaporated. Seconds later, the beaten-back torrent rained down upon the plaza, and on the soaked cobblestones, Ricardo collapsed against his great cleaver, supporting his weight on it.
"That's... what I get for not doing it for so long... My mouth's all split at the corners, huh?"
Both the gap in practice and the prolonged exertion left their mark on Ricardo himself. Breathing heavily, he nonetheless forced himself to stand on pure grit.
Alphard remained unharmed, dancing in place without showing any fatigue.
"Incredible, incredible! It's been a while since we were made to hold back. In our memories, it's been ages! Nice, good, fine, okay, could be worse, not bad, fair enough—and precisely because it could be worse—"
"—That's enough preaching."
"Oh, brother's back. Scary, cute, and oh so jealous."
Shaking his head, Alphard faced Julius, who had taken his place beside Ricardo.
His face was pale, his knight's attire drenched in blood. Even his breathing carried a faint tremor, and he was far from being in peak condition. Far from it—but even so— "You've caused quite a bit of trouble, Ricardo."
"You caused it. Make sure you tell the young miss just how hard I fought so I can get my hazard pay. Otherwise it won't balance out."
"I'll be sure to put in a good word for you on that front."
Regripping his knight's sword, Julius clapped Ricardo's shoulder before glaring at Alphard. The blasphemer smiled at that gaze, blushed, and twisted his lips in spite.
Expression, manner, even the way he fought—everything was a patchwork of contradictions, deeply unsettling.
Or perhaps that was precisely what related to the Authority of "Gluttony."
"You've mastered the sword, martial arts, even magic to such a degree—how is it that you fell to evil? Your power could have found purpose elsewhere, in other places."
"Elsewhere, you say? Like what kind of places would brother propose, for example?"
The way he called him "brother" carried an undercurrent of disgust.
Every time Alphard said it—licking his lips, in a fawning tone, with a clinging manner—Julius felt the word's value become defiled within him.
And that was a strange sensation in its own right.
—He shouldn't have had any family who called him that.
"For instance, a knight. For instance, a mercenary. For instance, a hero. Power without conviction easily falls to evil, and great ability transforms into violence. That's why..."
"I knew you'd say that! I knew you'd say something like that, brother! The brother we know, the brother we believe in—I knew you'd say it! I just knew it!"
Abruptly cutting off the conversation, Alphard leaped toward Julius.
Julius held the knight's sword vertically and knocked down the incoming kick. As if iron plates were built into the sole, the hard impact met the blade and the slash couldn't cut through.
Spinning in place as if dancing, Alphard rotated his small frame sharply and continued throwing kicks, gradually pushing Julius's footing back in no time.
Even Ricardo couldn't find an opening to intervene against the fierce onslaught.
"Do you remember? Back when we were children! When we were sickly and feeling off, and we asked brother to pick the linga apples from the tree in the yard!"
"You're saying whatever you want...! I have no reason to remember such things. Stop forcing your selfish delusions onto others!"
"We were both still small, and brother initially said it was impossible, told us to give up! Do you remember? Or maybe not? But when brother refused, we wanted those linga apples even more! If brother said it couldn't be done, and we could do it, that would make us amazing! We'd have confidence! That's what we thought!"
"What—what are you talking about?! I don't know anything about that... I don't know!"
Toe strikes, heel strikes, spinning kicks, straight kicks, water-surface kicks, crescent kicks, somersaults, backspin kicks—Julius parried them all while the knight's sword groaned under the strain.
His arms were numb, his still-healing insides ached, and he tasted blood in his mouth. No—the taste of blood wasn't from coughing up blood. He was biting his own lip. He was—why?—right now.
Unable to tune out Alphard's delusions, no matter what.
"After that happened, we! You! Brother!"
"—!"
"We thought about it the whole time! We felt it the whole time! That it wasn't true! That we were burdens! And now—how does it feel now! Feels good, doesn't it! This is what it felt like! Ah, it must have felt wonderful! We finally understand!"
"I don't know anything about you!!"
Being forced to hear it all, Julius finally lost his composure.
Pouring strength into the knight's sword, he pushed back, and in the opening where Alphard's posture broke, he launched an attack. Downward slash, thrust, kick, slam, sweep, mow.
The slashes, steeped in fury and hostility, raced through the air. Alphard's long hair, whose dodge was a beat too late, had several locks severed and fell to the ground. Moreover, the slashes weren't the only thing to worry about.
"Ia! Qua! Aro! Ik! Mea! In!"
Woven like an incantation of magic were the names of the lesser spirits bound to the knight.
The six lesser spirits called by name blazed with increased radiance, converting the affirmation of their very existence into power and pouring destruction upon the knight's enemy.
—Six-colored light from six directions sealed Alphard in with no escape.
"This is the end—!"
Certain of victory, Julius lunged with an inescapable thrust.
It drove straight toward Alphard's chest, dead center— "Zetsushō."
The black palms brought together in front of his chest clamped onto the knight's sword blade and shattered it to pieces.
The fragments scattered, and the killing thrust lost its power.
But the magic from six directions was still bearing down— "Kōma Jutsushi."
A surge of mana erupted behind Alphard, shooting down all six types of approaching magic.
Magic of the same color struck magic of the same color, and every spell was nullified.
On top of that, with his means of attack sealed, Julius's eyes went wide.
"Senkō no Hebi."
What Alphard's toes flicked up was the very short sword he had discarded.
With a feint of retreating from Julius's attack, he had cunningly maneuvered to the short sword's position. Catching the spinning blade with both hands, Alphard's body rotated.
A storm of slashes raged, and Julius desperately raised his broken sword.
"————"
"Brother picked the linga apples for us. That's why we hated you."
With a sickening crunch, the arm severed at the elbow spun through the air and clattered onto the cobblestones.