Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
Cutie and Platy, around 5 minutes since their encounter.
They were both still unscathed.
“Ahh…… Ugh…… Ahh……”
Cutie breathed heavily as her shoulders went up and down.
“I think you’ve lasted quite long. The power welling up in this body is not something ordinary.”
Platy was completely calm.
She simply continued throwing her flesh knives at Cutie, which she grew out of both hands.
And their power was immense.
“Let’s end this already – hnh!”
Platy breathed out and threw the 4 knives she was holding between her fingers at the same time.
Due to their overwhelming speed, they were hard to see, and Cutie’s only choice was to estimate their trajectory by the way Platy’s arms moved.
Cutie breathed out, jumped to the side, and charged a pebble by her feet with mana.
The stone turned into a butterfly that immediately flew upwards and flapped its wings to protect Cutie.
But Platy’s flesh knives did not touch the butterfly, and instead mercilessly ripped up Cutie’s flesh.
(Aah, this is bad. I couldn’t even change their trajectory.)
She tried a few times already, but it did not matter whether the knives were small or medium sized.
It was the result of the overwhelming difference of Sorcery Rating between them.
Cutie rolled on the ground with a sour look on her face to dodge the knives.
When the knives hit the ground behind Cutie, they created small craters after the stone paving burst open.
Cutie’s arms were ripped up, her clothes were torn, and she was bleeding.
“Uuuh……”
“Looks like you’re finally starting to lose your calm.”
“But you didn’t hit me directly, did you?”
“My knives cut up everything around them, that’s all.”
It was not that difficult to use a spell like that.
The knives were simply too fast, bursting flesh open with the shockwaves they created around them.
“Looks like this is going to end soon!”
Platy continued throwing knives at Cutie with great vigor.
There was no end to the knives she grew from her own flesh.
Cutie frantically ran through the road, sometimes trying to use her own powers to block the attacks, but it all came to naught.
She transformed a large stone into an insect, and transformed a car nearby into an alligator to use it as a shield, but they were all ripped up by red knives.
It was not some trick.
And it was not in the overwhelming category.
Platy was simply strong, and Cutie faced the reality that only defeat awaited her if this kept up.
The buildings and the roads around were full of holes, and the injuries on Cutie’s body also increased.
“Even…. Even if. Even if someone else finishes their fight and comes to your aid. My Sorcery Rating is 30,000. Do you think some exhausted arcana user can win against that?”
“I have to! I have to do it!”
“You’re optimistic.”
“Because that’s how my father taught me to live!”
“I’m jealous.”
“Didn’t you learn anything!?”
“No matter what, obey your master. So, I’m going to use all my strength to do that.”
Platy put more knives between her fingers.
But it did not end with just that this time.
In the backs of her hands, her palms, the entirety of her arms, and extending even to her torso and legs, blades protruded out of her whole body.
“Disgusting!”
“Now, can you dodge this, Cutie?”
“Hmm, maybe not.”
Blood spurted out of Platy’s body as countless blades shot out of it.
There were hundreds of them.
Unlike the knives she was throwing earlier, they were shot in a wider area, without losing their former power nor speed.
There was no way for Cutie to dodge or protect herself until they reached her.
In other words, she had to receive this attack head-on somehow.
Would she sacrifice her arms, legs, or lose her head after hesitating for too long?
Platy watched Cutie to see what would happen.
But Cutie’s move went beyond Platy’s imagination.
“Huuh!?”
Cutie went up.
Cutie jumped with a speed that far surpassed her physical capabilities, and remained in the air while flapping the wings on her back.
Platy squinted her eyes as if they were dazzled by light while she stared at Cutie’s white angel-like wings flapping in the air.
“I was wondering if you could transform life-forms into other animals.”
“Looks like I can force my body to do all sorts of things using arcana.”
Cutie transformed her own back into a bird and grew wings.
But, Empress was normally only usable on non-living objects.
What would happen after she forcefully used it on her own body?
(My back is going to be in shreds after I cancel this. Man, I don’t even want to imagine it.)
Cutie felt gloomy when she thought about what would happen after the battle.
But, she could move a lot quicker than before now.
“Well, Platy, I can still keep moving. When are you going to catch me, I wonder?”
“Hmh, it’s going to be a little different, but it’s going to be fun to play tag like a child again. I’ll keep going, up until you die!”
Platy further raised the gears.
She was not throwing knives now, but shooting them from her own body, and she ran Cutie down with fierce attacks.
Cutie used the wings on her back and freely flew around Captis.
◇◇◇
“How long will you keep that up? So irritating!”
Mary was annoyed as she swung her scythe.
“Hahaha, goodbye! See you in the next world – rather, see you very soon!”
Magrat, while laughing in front of Mary’s eyes, swore on a quick reunion and died.
It was clearly his corpse there.
Cut in two, smiling with its tongue out, and making peace signs with both hands.
Mary frowned and devoured the corpse.
Then, she immediately watched her surroundings.
(He’ll come out again right away anyhow. Just how can I kill that man……!?)
Magrat came back to life even if he died.
It was questionable whether or not that was the power of Hermit.
As for why, the man himself seemed to be lamenting this power.
At any rate, nothing changed the fact that Magrat would keep coming back after killing him again and again.
How could she kill him for good?
What were the conditions for his resurrection?
She killed him a few times and finally grasped a clue.
(Let’s calm down and think about this. Firstly, it looks like Magrat can’t choose who he will possess. His life automatically transfers to the closest target.)
If he could control the timing, there was no reason to go out of his way to transform in front of Mary.
Doing it just once would have been enough to ‘show off’.
(Also, he can’t possess all humans. Some people safely ran away, and it looks like the humans he can possess have something in common.)
That was not a unique bodily feature, but an ‘action’.
(Magrat has been reappearing from the ‘same direction’ when I kill him. And it looks like there’s…… a ‘shelter’ over there.)
It was the same with the family who were possessed first.
They had said that they came from a shelter.
But it was full and they could not enter. In other words, there were hundreds of people there.
It was strange for Magrat, someone who loves killing, to ignore all those people and focus on Mary outside.
“……!”
Mary quietly covered her left arm with bones and caught the ‘invisible attack’ coming from behind her.
She crushed it, turned towards Magrat coming from the other side, and raised her right fist.
Her foe was trying to hide, but Star’s navigation clearly showed his position.
Mary felt a clean hit.
There was no sound, and she did not see anything, but she probably hit him on the cheek.
She continued punching his body and lower jaw, and kicked him in the groin as the final blow.
“Ah…… Arrrgh…… Never…… That’s seriously never……!”
Magrat became visible as he staggered while holding his private parts and leaned against the wall of a building.
“Aaah! I know it’s someone else’s, but it still hurts. You can’t kill me like that, so let’s ban that part, okay?”
Mary faced him as he spoke in a familiar manner and shot a bone spike from the palm of her hand.
“You’re just gonna quietly ki – guh, gah, gaaaagh!”
Mary intentionally stabbed his arms and legs instead of a vital part of his body and stopped him from moving.
He suffered as he sweated from his forehead, and started masochistically laughing.
“M-Maaaary, did you take a liking to torture since we last met? I get that. I really do. Hurting and killing people is fun, isn’t it!? You found out, and now you’re just like me.”
Mary did not react.
She pretended to think for a while, then left.
“Hey, don’t ignore me. Is that some kind of fetish? I don’t really like that tuff! Let’s have more fun together!”
Mary heard some complaints coming from behind her, but it was just noise.
Mary was not recognizing these as meaningful words any more.
Then, she arrived at the entrance of the shelter.
There were no signs of people near the door.
“……I thought there would be guards here.”
It was strange that there was no one there.
She had a bad feeling as she entered inside.
It was originally an arena used for sports, as she spotted locker rooms and showers inside.
She did not see any soldiers anywhere, but they suddenly showed themselves after Mary went through a certain door.
They immediately turned their guns at her.
“Whoa, I can’t believe it’s the princess. W-We’re very sorry!”
But when they noticed that it was Mary, they frantically put their guns down.
“Is the arena this way?”
“Yes! Currently, there are around 300 citizens taking refuge inside!”
“I didn’t see any guards out front, though.”
“No, you should have. There were 4 people deployed out there!”
She faintly squinted her eyes and sighed.
“What are they handing out inside the arena?”
“It’s a medicine supplied by Majoram. They said the enemy might use poison gas, so they gave us this medicine as a precaution.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that……”
Mary approached the desk handing out the medicine.
Soldiers were giving medicine to a few citizens that came from the outside, probably a family.
The arena was full, so they were giving them medicine and having them go to another shelter.
Mary extended the arms on her back and suddenly took the pills from the citizens.
“Princess, what are you doing!?”
She smelled them up close.
It was very faint, and Mary only picked it up because she was constantly so close to ‘death’, but Mary noticed the smell of blood.
Mary loudly sighed, shook her head sideways and spoke up to the citizens who were astonished after their medicine was taken away.
“Please leave this place right now. It’s dangerous here.”
“B-But……”
“Just go!”
Mary shouted angrily, a rare thing for her to do.
The family cowered and jogged towards the exit.
The soldiers who saw this blankly stared at Mary with their mouths half-open.
Mary asked them:
“Did you take the medicine too?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You as well?”
“Yes, I was the first one.”
“And all the refugees here?”
“There’s still some left in storage, but I think everyone took one.”
Mary peeked into the arena from a window in the entrance.
A large number of people were gathered in a wide space, and they all looked uneasy.
(The thing creating angels is someone’s blood. And there’s a small amount of blood in the pills here.)
Mary searched for the answer while looking at the faces of the citizens.
She did not want to know, but……
(The enemy arcana’s power that creates ‘angels’. It can freely transform the body of anyone who’s consumed that blood. So they’re transforming the targets into Magrat by giving them these pills. Of course, that alone doesn’t explain everything, but……)
The fine details weren’t the problem.
The important thing was to find a way to kill Magrat.
(At the very least, it’s certain that everyone in this arena is a spare of Magrat.)
Mary put her hand on the door of the entrance and looked inside through the window.
Around 300 innocent lives.
But they were already sacrifices for Magrat, and even if he did not exist, it was certain that they would transform into abnormal monsters in the end.