Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
Noted watched the battle with intense concentration through a window of Majoram’s main office building.
Tears welled up in his eyes.
The reason he had built the main office here was because he could see all of Captis from it.
He had watched it prosper more and more in real time.
But, on this day, everything that they had built up crumbled away like a rotten tree.
Fortunately, the headquarters, and the Romeo Tower built by Dugan were still safe.
No, rather than fortune, perhaps it would be better to call it irony.
Perhaps that was due to the tiny bit of conscience remaining inside Dugan? Noted reflexively laughed at himself for thinking such a thing.
“Now that it’s come to this, I only wish for one thing. Cutie…… please come back alive.”
He could not do anything but pray for that now.
Everything else that he had wished for was already broken.
He bit his lips as his moist eyes reflected the rising flames.
◇◇◇
All Mary could do before the light raining down from the sky was to keep evading.
Fortunately, the Star arcana came in useful at a time like this.
Perhaps the arcana was also trying to encourage Mary, as it intentionally took Francis’s form while guiding her.
“Uuuh! We’re jumping back next! Then we’re moving to the right!”
“Okay, sis! Ah, aah……!”
Sweat began to drip down the foreheads of Mary and Ami.
The battle had been tiresome both in terms of stamina and mana.
Most of all, this skeleton giant was not made with a drawn-out battle in mind in the first place.
It took a lot of mana just to maintain it, and no matter how many corpses Mary ate to refill it, she was not sure how long she could keep it going for.
In the first place, Dugan’s light could pierce her even before her skeleton stopped working anyhow.
“Charge forward next!”
“But your arm!”
“We’ll make it if I make my body lighter. Aaaaaah!”
Two rays burned the ground as they came at them from the front.
Mary charged towards them, offering up her right arm, but her other arm was safe.
She dodged the next light ray by jumping with her now lighter body.
She rolled forward after landing.
Next, she started moving with Ami’s wheels, used the momentum to jump, and escaped Dugan’s pursuit.
The battle continued.
But it was going to be bad for Mary and Ami if it continued for much longer.
“It’s coming again…… Cutie and Calaria might be in trouble too!”
Mary saw the two fighting far off in the edge of her view.
Still holding Calaria, Cutie flew around up and down and to the sides.
She was clenching her teeth and looked desperate.
Calaria shouted and warned her about something, but Cutie did not seem to listen.
But one could tell from the two’s expressions that they were having a hard time.
They would not last long either.
(I have to do something. Even if I can’t reach them, I have to do something and stop Dugan!)
Dugan’s attacks were mostly instinctual.
Even if he was being controlled, maybe because he could not be given detailed orders, he only targeted his enemies in a rough manner.
So Mary and the others could barely avoid him, but if any of Dugan’s own intelligence remained, they would have already been done for.
They had some leeway thanks to that.
Especially immediately after they dodged the light attacks, they now had a chance to counterattack.
The giant leaped up, did a somersault and landed on the ground.
The shockwave dented the ground and rubble flew up.
The giant immediately raised its right arm up into the night sky, turned its forearm into a shell and shot.
“Burial Cannon. How about that!?”
The giant’s entire body shook from the recoil and its heels sunk into the ground.
The bombardment targeting Dugan impressively landed on him while he was still in the air.
Then, Dugan’s wide-mouthed pistil face crushed the shell into pieces.
Mary could not see that many details, but she could tell that the shell disappeared without hitting the mark.
“Sis, did it work?”
Mary quietly shook her head in reply to Ami’s question.
Ami’s expression started to show impatience as well.
“That man…… he’s stronger than I thought, isn’t he?”
The light attacks continued after stopping for only a moment.
Mary and Ami started dodging again, but their movements were a little dull.
They were showing clear signs of psychological and physiological exhaustion.
“We have to…… find some way. We can’t go on like this……!”
“Sis…… can’t you use some other arcana somehow?”
“I have enough power to use Death God and Star. Same with Hanged Man. I also have Tower and Hermit, but even if I can buy some time with Hermit, that would expose Miss. Calaria and Miss. Cutie to danger……”
“So you can use Tower and Hermit…… Hmm, how can we defeat Dugan with those……?”
“Tower…… Tower……?”
Mary thought about it while evading Dugan’s attacks and saw the Romeo Tower at the center of the town.
That was where everything began, and everything ended.
“Tower…… Yes, tower! That’ll work!”
“Sis?”
“Ami, can you get out for a bit? I want to keep going by myself.”
“There’s nothing I can help you with?”
“You’ve already helped me enough, no, more than enough. I’m sorry to have to leave you in a dangerous spot.”
“That’s fine. Foot chases are my specialty!”
Saying that, Ami jumped out with a smile on her face.
Mary watched her land on the ground and quickly started running.
Her mobility sharply dropped after Ami left.
It was hard to keep dodging.
So, when she saw that her target moved away from the spot Ami was in……
“Miss. Cutie, Miss. Calaria, I’m sorry but I need you to buy me a little time! Arcana Installation, Hermit!”
She activated the arcana of Magrat, whom she had just eaten.
She used it to make the giant she had created disappear.
Its presence, smell, sounds, and everything was erased as it was flawlessly concealed from Dugan who was still in the skies.
Dugan’s attacks momentarily stopped.
He was clearly confused.
◇◇◇
Cutie was confused after Mary’s sudden disappearance.
“She’s gone? Did she run out of mana?”
“But it was way too sudden. Actually, I remember her saying that she ate an arcana that lets her hide herself.”
“Are you saying she used that? The old man is going to focus on us, then.”
“Looks like we need to buy some time.”
“She really works us to the bone. Fine, let’s do that.”
“I’m kinda afraid. You can drop me off if you want, though.”
“Stay with me, I don’t want to die alone.”
“I must be pretty heavy, though. You’re not going to ask for a premium, right?”
“I’ll think about that when we survive through this!”
A light flashed above their heads.
Dugan started attacking again.
Cutie fired herself up again and flew through the night sky as a decoy while carrying Calaria.
◇◇◇
There was still a usable tower remaining in Captis.
For Dugan, the building was a memory of his son.
Perhaps what little was left of his willpower was the reason the tower still remained.
Mary laughed, hoping that was the case.
Now that Dugan was being controlled by a mysterious arcana user, killing him would not satisfy Mary’s desire for revenge.
It was pointless when Dugan was not conscious.
Of course, Mary was not going to destroy that tower just for revenge.
The skeleton giant approached the Romeo Tower and transformed its right arm into a sword.
It swung in a wide arc and cut the building’s foundation.
Hermit’s concealment was canceled at the moment of attack.
Dugan noticed Mary’s location.
When the giant attacked again, the Romeo Tower was severed from its foundation.
It held the tower as it was cut off from the ground.
“Arcana Installation, Tower!”
The giant put its right hand on the bottom of the tower, supported the base with its left hand, and started running while holding it.
Dugan switched targets from Cutie to Mary and aimed with his fingers.
The giant took a throwing stance when it got close enough.
It threw the tower like a javelin.
“N-No way…… That’s what we were buying time for!?”
“Ha, hahahaha! What an absurd idea!”
Cutie and Calaria couldn’t help but shout.
“Whoa…… That’s so cool, sis! Go! Do it!”
Ami jumped up and cheered for Mary.
Her voice did not reach Mary, who was far away, but she knew that this was an absurd strategy.
But, the very existence of their enemy was absurd in itself.
There was nothing wrong with an absurd strategy.
Mary convinced herself so and threw the Romeo Tower with all her might.
“Aaaaaah!”
The tower left Mary’s right hand after a ferocious roar.
It was launched into the skies at several times the speed that the others imagined.
It took a lot of strength to just hold the tower up.
So it was impossible to run with it and throw it.
The giant had integrated the tower into its arm.
And just before throwing it, it shifted the tower’s ‘bottom’, like pushing a wall, and used the momentum to throw the tower.
Of course, the giant also protruded bones from the palm of its hand when it threw and added even more speed to the throw.
“Is that massive thing really flying in the air?”
“I think it’ll reach the target with that speed. But even if it does, the ‘tower’ itself is just a lump of stone.”
Even Mary’s mana-reinforced bombardment shell was smashed to pieces by Dugan’s teeth.
Even if it was a direct hit, it was hard to believe that this could do any real damage to Dugan.
While Calaria and Cutie followed the towers in the sky with their eyes, Ami, who was watching from the ground, was the first to notice something.
“Huh? Where did sis go?”
The skeleton giant crumbled away.
Mary was not inside it.
She had not used Hermit, but she was still suddenly gone.
Dugan looked down from the sky and noticed this too.
He was confused again and stopped his light ray attacks.
Dugan’s massive face stretching out from the flower focused its light ray on the incoming tower.
Then, a particularly big face with pistils attached to it opened its mouth wide enough to tear its cheeks, and crushed the tower’s sharp tip.
It then repeatedly opened and closed its mouth at high speed, and Dugan completely pulverized the massive Romeo Tower.
The skies of Captis went quiet again.
Dugan fixed his gaze on the burned plains, but a young girl was standing on his shoulder.
It was Mary, wearing her black and white dress.
“Phew…… I made it here somehow.”
She was hiding in the tower.
In other words, it was not a throwing attack – it was a means of transportation.
The big performance was there to hide her true intentions.
When Dugan noticed her presence, she had already moved to his back.
Then, she activated her arcana powers when she stood before his flapping wings.
“Myriad Corpse – Burial Geist.”
It was the spell that created the giant.
This time, the giant was created not on the ground, but on top of Dugan’s back.
“Uaaaagh!”
The monster twisted its body in anger.
But the skeleton giant’s upper half was already complete, and it had firmly grabbed Dugan’s wings with its hands.
“Thank goodness. I was really worried about how I could defeat you. It’s hard to come up with a way to destroy such a huge body at once.”
She focused her strength into her hands while grabbing the wings.
A painful noise of something tearing up echoed.
“But, I found a way thanks to you going up to a high place.”
Dugan’s wings were completely torn up, and he started free falling after losing the means to fly.
Naturally, he immediately tried to grow new wings, but Mary standing on his back did not let that happen.
“It’s useless to struggle! You don’t want to disgrace yourself more than you already have either, do you!?”
As soon as he grew new ones, Mary carved up Dugan’s wings using the swords she transformed her arms into.
The skeleton giant was also completed in the meanwhile.
Its weight increased, which also sped up their fall.
“Aaaaaah! Aaaaah!”
Dugan let out a faint groan during his last moments.
He could not escape.
The giant’s weight pulled him towards death.
The Death God thrust him into death.
“This is the end, Dugan!”
There was no escape now.
In the end, without slowing down even once, Dugan crashed into the ground.
A noise that resembled an explosion echoed in the area.
The shockwave ran through Dugan’s body like a wave.
The forces that maintained his body broke down and the contents of his body poured out.
His flesh was crushed and burst open.
The spurting blood stained the surroundings like a river.
His bones broke, his intestines flew out, and the flower of death bloomed in the center of Captis.
“Ahh…… Ahh…… Ahh……”
The giant grabbed Dugan’s neck and pushed him into the ground.
Several of its limbs were shattered by the impact of the fall, but that was a minor problem.
Its task was done.
All that remained was Mary, alive and well.