Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
After the camera was destroyed, Mary sat down in a nearby chair and exhaled.
Her wounds were wriggling and writhing, trying to return to their original shapes, but the pain and the peculiarly unpleasant sensation were chipping away at her mind.
Ami, who was lying on the bed, looked into her face with concern.
“Lady Mary…… What happened?”
She hadn’t left the room, and had only heard the sound of commotion from outside, which must have been unsettling.
Mary forced a smile and patted her head.
“You’ll be fine as long as you stay in this room.”
No guarantees – but still, it was probably far better than being outside.
Then Tinny slumped to the floor, and said:
“I’m sorry, Princess. You did this…… to save me.”
“I’ll be back on my feet in no time, there’s no need to be heartbroken.”
“She should at least owe you a favor. You have killed so many people, you’re not going to be a softy now, are you?”
“I don’t kill indiscriminately. I’m just making a distinction between those who should die and those who should live.”
“That’s a scary thing, isn’t it? Well, that’s alright. We’ll just have to figure out what to do from here.”
“I think we should run away!”
Tinny answered immediately.
Mary also looked confused, but she did not say no.
“It’s possible if you break down the walls and make a path for us, right Mary?”
“I wish it were that easy.”
“What’s the problem?”
“If it’s the same as last time, I think there’s a good chance that the sorcerer has already blocked the exit with their ability. Besides, one of our objectives is to reduce the number of arcana users on the other side.”
“I knew it. It doesn’t look like there’s more than one arcana user here, right?”
“I want to crush this sorcerer while we still can. If we lose here, we won’t be able to fight through next time.”
“Uh, umm, but……”
“I’m sorry Miss. Tinny, but our priority is to destroy the enemy. I think that will help protect the people of the Liberation Front.”
“……I understand.”
Marry could understand Tinny’s apprehensions.
But, there was no proving their safety no matter which route they chose.
The safest path was to kill the enemy and leave – nothing else.
“In that case, we must first reveal the enemy’s power. I think they’ve exposed their abilities thanks to your moves, Mary.”
“Yes, the enemy can only attack in a certain range around those glass marbles.”
“But that doesn’t explain what happened with the first pipe, does it?”
“I’m also curious about the troop who fell and died.”
The glass marbles were not there at the start.
And the second victim was killed by some other means.
Mary put her hand on her chin and started to think.
A vibration interrupted her thinking.
There was a message on Tinny’s device.
“Who is it from?”
“It’s…… that girl saved by Miss. Calaria. Will you take it, Princess?”
Mary nodded and took the device from Tinny’s right hand.
Then, she heard Calaria’s voice.
“I’ve got a connection. This is Calaria, please respond.”
“This is Mary. Miss. Calaria, you’re safe!”
“I connected to the device of that woman named Tinny, is she with you?”
“Yes, the three of us ran into the doctor’s office. Miss. Cutie and Ami are also with us.”
“That’s good to hear. The woman I saved is also safe here. Looks like things got messy after I left, what happened?”
“A lot of glass marbles were scattered around after that, and the people who got close to them died.”
“Glass marbles? Not clocks?”
“Clocks?”
Mary tilted her head.
“I was sure that it was a power that killed those who got close to a clock. Because stones get bounced off even if I throw them to destroy the clocks.”
“The same thing happened with the glass marbles! The bones I launched warped and didn’t hit the glass marbles.”
“So the clocks and the glass marbles fulfill the same condition.”
“If we find the common point between those two things……”
“Mary, give me the device.”
“Huh? Oh, okay.”
Cutie switched the device to conversation mode and put it on the ground.
“What happened?”
Calaria’s voice could be heard by everyone in the room even without being near the device.
“It’s easier to talk like this.”
“Cutie? So you’re alive.”
“What a shame, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You should worry about me a little…… So, where are you right now?”
“In a room.”
“The lodging area, the four-person rooms we usually live in.”
It was the voice of the woman Calaria saved.
It didn’t sound like she was hurt in any way.
“Are things safe over there?”
“There’s no danger to our lives if we stay away from the clocks. I want to come up with a real ‘answer’ while we can. Does someone have any idea what the common point between clocks and glass marbles could be?”
“They’re both round!”
“Ami, right? Please be quiet.”
“Uuh……”
Ami was dejected after being scolded by Cutie and clung to Mary.
“There are 12 arcanas in total. I think it would be faster to figure it out from among those rather than investigating without any hints.”
“Miss. Cutie, do you know a lot about arcana?”
“Knowledge of sorcery is necessary in order to develop sorcery weapons. I know about arcana, as it is the ‘climax’ of sorcery.”
Cutie said so proudly, implying that Mary was the strange one for not knowing.
Then, Tinny asked:
“I don’t know much about arcana, actually. What is it, anyway?”
Ami also nodded, ‘mhm, mhm’.
“Arcana is ‘God’. The twelve pillar Gods who created this world, in order to maintain order, each choose a sorcerer befitting of themselves and grant them power.”
“So an arcana chooses its practitioner? Then, does that mean I was also chosen?”
“That’s right, Mary. Arcana has a will. So, it can also have an influence on the personality of the sorcerer who becomes its vessel.”
Cutie looked at Mary with sharp eyes.
“So you’re saying the change in my view of life and death is because of that?”
“You should be able to understand yourself whether that comes from your desire for vengeance or if it’s because of the arcana, right?”
“Yeah, you’re right. But this isn’t the time to argue about that. Can you tell us what kinds of arcana there are?”
“Okay. I’ll line them up for you, so make sure you remember.”
Saying that, Cutie continued speaking and told the names of the different arcana.
“Magician, High Priestess, Empress, Emperor, Hierophant, Lover, Chariot, Power, Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, Hanged Man, Death God, Temperance, Devil, Tower, Star, Moon, Sun, Judgement – these are the names of the 12 pillar Gods said to have created this world.”
“T-That’s a lot……”
Ami’s eyes rolled around in confusion due to the high volume of information.
Mary noted these names in her mind and sorted through the information.
“So it has to be something other than the Magician, Hermit, Justice and Death God, right?”
“It’s possible Justice has already been passed on to a new user.”
“Passed on?”
“After an arcana user’s death, a new user is elected. It is said it can take from a few months to a few years for the inheritance to occur. Time has passed since Yueri’s death. Someone we don’t know might have inherited that power by now.”
“You know about this stuff too, huh? It’s only natural if you were raised by an arcana user, I suppose.”
“So that’s how it works……”
Mary hadn’t thought about it before, but this system made sense when she thought about it.
In other words, her Death God power also belonged to someone else before her.
“But, justice doesn’t have anything to do with glass marbles or clocks, right?”
“The only common point they have is that they are both round, as Ami said.”
“How about Wheel of Fortune, then?”
“Wheels really are round, but is that all?”
“Clocks and glass marbles are both round and rotate. Wheels also rotate. That toy clown was also riding a unicycle.”
“Oh, you’re right. That weird doll wasn’t a dummy or something; it would have also made it possible for the enemy to attack us if it got closer to us, right?”
It was a two-stage trap, with its outer appearance of a doll and the glass marbles inside it.
Mary’s judgment was not mistaken, which made her feel a little better, but that did not change the fact that there were victims.
“In other words, the enemy’s powers only work around objects that rotate. However, if that’s our conclusion, there are too many places we have to be wary of.”
“Yes, we can’t let our guards down.”
As if following that remark, they heard something burst open above their heads.
“What was that sound!?”
Tinny got very scared.
There was a fan on the ceiling for air conditioning.
The air around it was twisting as it turned.
Mary extended the bones growing out of her back before receiving the attack.
She tried to crush the fan, but her hands were bent by an invisible power.
“Even Lady Mary can’t break it……”
The powerless Ami curled up in fear on her bed.
Mary grew another arm and grabbed the fan from all sides.
“Ugh…… Uuh…..! If this power uses mana, then I can use even more mana to crush it…..!”
Mary’s Death God finally surpassed Wheel of Fortune and crushed the ceiling fan.
It stopped turning and dropped to the floor.
“Phew……”
“If just one of them gets you so tired, we’re never going to make it.”
“Yes, this person’s Sorcery Rating must be extremely high……”
“Perhaps they can display such power because they are bound to the ‘rotating object’”.
“It’s best we crush the user. Hey Tinny, who’s the person who installed all these clocks in this hideout?”
“……That’s, well……”
Tinny hesitated to speak.
She couldn’t so easily throw away one of the troops she had been working with so far.
Mary said the name instead.
“The skinny commanding officer with glasses whom I met when I first got here – Indi, I think.”
Tinny slowly nodded.
That name was constantly in her head after hearing that ‘clocks’ were a trigger to activate this power.
“He’s a spy that Dugan sent in here.”
“That’s not even funny as a joke. So I should head for the monitoring room and kill him, right?”
“Indi himself may be the arcana user too.”
“But we could see his Sorcery Rating by using Analyze. Wouldn’t it be hard to hide the fact that he is an arcana user?”
“Mary, use Analyze on me.”
“Huh? Oh, okay, understood……”
The writing was blurred, and Mary couldn’t read the Sorcery Rating on display.
Mary squinted her eyes, but nothing changed.
“Huh? Why…..?”
“It’s a type of jammer that blocks sorcery. It blocks all sorcery, so it works on Analyze as well. It’s still in development, so only a few members of the executive staff have one.”
Cutie proudly took out the device from her coat’s pocket.
It was the jammer.
“So it can falsify a Sorcery Rating?”
“This is our newest technology, but a top-grade sorcerer could have the means to do this themselves.”
“I’m feeling more and more uneasy about being alone. I’d be grateful if you came over, Mary.”
“Understood. How will you stay safe, Miss. Cutie?”
“I just have to stay away from ‘rotating stuff’, right? It’s just a clock on the wall in this room. It’s fine, it’s more important to destroy the source of all this.”
“I’ll at least break that clock before I go.”
“Yeah, that would be great.”
“This is a lot of work, we have to ask for some proper compensation, Mary.”
“Yeah, I’ll make sure to get quite a lot if we survive this.”
“Damn mercenary, all you see is money.”
Mary crushed the clock using her bone arms like she crushed the fan earlier.
The device inside her skirt vibrated right as she crushed the clock.
“……A call?”
“Where did you put that thing?”
“There’s a perfect spot for it on my belt.”
Mary reached out to her device.
This reminded Cutie of something.
(Huh? Wait, the device’s vibration uses a rotating motor, doesn’t it?)
She felt a chill.
But nothing had happened when Tinny’s device vibrated before.
Cutie shouted, wishing nothing would happen this time either:
“Mary, let go of the device!”
“Huh?”
Then, the air twisted along with Mary.
An unstoppable power broke her bones and tore her flesh.
Her body was cut right in half, rolling around on the floor while shooting blood all over the room.