Volume 2 – The World Sneered
“Don’t run! Fight me here!”
The bullet fired by Calaria scraped Ami’s side.
“I will not let you get away – Myriad Corpse Burial Cannon!”
“My familia, kill and devour that criminal!”
The shot fired by Mary, and the birds Cutie sent out assailed her from the back one after the other.
Ami was scared because of people she knew well trying to kill her, and ran faster with tears in her eyes.
She used the wheels she created on the backs of her shoes and charged towards the forest in the back of the park as they scraped against the ground.
“I’m the fastest one! But…… But……!”
She knew that running away was her only choice, but still did not understand the situation.
Why did she have to be hated by the people she loved?
Mary and the others were clearly seeing Ami as someone else while attacking her.
And the number on her arm – a mysterious tattoo that she could not erase no matter how much she tried to scrub it clean.
“I’m not going to die in a place like this……! I’m going to go back to normal and kiss my sis!”
Ami set her mind on her objective with firm determination.
She dropped her hips, increased the spinning rate of her wheels even further and disappeared towards the depths of a mountain.
◇◇◇
Ami managed to lose the three a few minutes later.
She leaned back against the trunk of a large tree and took control of her breathing as her shoulders went up and down.
The air in the forest was clear, and filling her lungs with it cleared her mind and gave her a refreshing tranquility.
Her drowsiness after waking up was completely gone now.
Ami smacked herself on the cheeks as her expression became more intense.
She was now in battle-mode.
“The most important thing when you’re fighting against arcana is information. I may not be that smart, but I have to think about why this happened to me.”
The big change happening before Ami’s eyes was probably because of Elastis.
“How did she have a comms terminal? We took her terminal before the fight, and didn’t let her come in contact with anyone after that…… Did she get one during the fight?”
The villagers were being evacuated during the battle, so she could not have approached one of them.
And Cruz or Ox were too busy fighting to come in direct contact with Elastis there.
“That leaves…… Yeah, Digi! Magician could come in contact with Elastis! Calaria also said she was doing something before she saved Ox!”
If the ‘preparation’ Digi mentioned was to hand Elastis a terminal, this situation started to make sense.
“But, could she hide a terminal and carry it around? I feel like Calaria wouldn’t miss that…… Oh, right, she didn’t have to carry it with her. She only had to know its location!”
That gave rise to a different problem, however.
Simply leaving it in a certain spot carried the risk of someone else finding it.
In other words, it was necessary to bury it under the ground and hide it.
But could Elastis have dug the ground in front of an employee despite already being under suspicion?
“It’s suspicious of her to go behind the toilet in the first place…… If the employee told us, then the ring around her neck would explode…… Toilet…… the window?”
Her memories were vague, but she felt like there was a window behind the toilet.
Elastis could have entered through the door, crawled out of the window and taken the hidden portable terminal.
“Hmm, but that means Digi had to know in advance that we were coming here. When did she find out? We only decided to come here after the battle in the village.”
The more she thought about it, the more confusing it got.
Ami held her head and groaned.
“Hmm…… Hmm…… I don’t understand! It has to be a trap set up by Digi either way, so let’s just leave it at that. She used Elastis and made her join us…… but, why? Lover is a power that makes someone fall in love, right?”
And Elastis had said Lover’s powers were ‘Love Is Dead’ and ‘Love Is Clear’.
She could not use her powers without a bow.
Even if that was a lie, could she control an attribute such as ‘hatred’ that directly opposed Lover?
“Love…… Hatred…… Opposite? Yeah, Mr. Noted talked about the opposite of an arcana power being activated. Umm, I think he called it Reverse. But didn’t that activate in exchange for one’s life? He said that in Hanged Man’s case, he resurrected and it activated after he died once. Elastis was alive, right? She didn’t react to me, but she didn’t look like she-”
It was true that she looked strange.
But Ami would notice it if she had died just standing there.
She knew that Elastis heard something very shocking, though.
“……I don’t understand. Why? Why did Elastis’s Reverse activate? But…… If this is a Reverse, I have to kill Elastis to save myself. That’s clear.”
Elastis’s location was a considerable distance from here.
Further, Mary and the others were probably searching for Ami in the forest right now.
It was almost impossible to return without encountering them.
“I’m glad all I have to do is kill her. I can just use the ring.”
Ami had put a ring around Elastis’s neck.
She could squeeze it and behead her even from this distance.
Ami clenched the palm of her hand and charged it with mana.
But she tilted her head when she felt no response.
“It’s gone……? Is it broken? But it was there just now! Did sis and the others break it!?”
Ami was the target of their hatred.
They might have broken the ring she created out of suspicion for Ami.
“Then I have to kill her directly, after all…… I have to fight everyone……”
Ami’s clenched hand started shaking.
She had no intention of killing them, of course.
But a fight between arcana users was definitely a fight to the death.
She could kill them by mistake or end up being killed.
“No…… Noo……!”
Ami loved Mary for risking her life to save someone as worthless as herself.
She loved her so much, and she was fine with risking her own life for Mary as well.
But it was a little different right now.
There was a time that she thought all she had to do was to use up her life, but her desires expanded as her feelings grew larger.
They had 24 days together left.
For Ami, it was a time of luxury that a commoner could never acquire in all her life.
But she did not want it to end.
She wanted to be with Mary, longer, forever, as sisters – perhaps as more than that, she wanted Mary to love her.
Losing that was the scariest thing for Ami.
Perhaps it was contradictory, but that was scarier than even death.
“I don’t want it to end in a place like this after I started getting along with Cutie and Calaria too……!”
She hung her head down and firmly clenched both hands.
Then, the number on the palm of her right hand changed.
“It went to 5 from 6? Is it decreasing? I think it’s been 10 minutes since this started. Does this mean there’s an hour? Yay! Maybe the spell will be lifted when the time runs out!”
Ami’s facial expression became a little more cheerful as it displayed her hope.
She put her hands in front of her face and stared at the number ‘V’, then she noticed something.
“……Huh? Am I still sleepy?”
She could not believe what she could see, and rubbed her eyes.
But it did not change.
“The tip of my finger is transparent……”
She frantically checked all her body.
Then, her limbs and a part of her body started going transparent as well.
“W-What is this!? Is it the Reverse of Lover too?”
She felt that her very existence was getting fainter, not just her appearance.
“Then when this number…… reaches zero, am I going to disappear? So I have to kill Elastis in 50 minutes!?”
It was not even death.
It was an end that did not even leave memories behind; annihilation.
Ami’s entire body trembled and she felt even more afraid.
“I definitely don’t want sis to forget about me after I die! I have to do it. I have to reach Elastis!”
The ‘fear’ surging up from the depths of her body pushed her on the back and Ami’s determination strengthened.
Then, she felt a slight stinging pain in her exposed calf.
“Ouch!…… What? Bugs?”
She saw that a small insect resembling an ant had pierced her skin with its sharp jaw, and she was bleeding.
Then, she saw many more of the same bug climbing up her leg.
She immediately created wheels on her legs, spinned them and cleared the bugs out.
“Those weren’t normal bugs. Wait!”
Ami leaped back from that spot, and the swarm of bugs going after her also changed directions and crawled towards her.
There were thousands, or even tens of thousands of them – enough to completely cover Ami’s view.
And, a woman with blonde hair stood behind the swarm of bugs.
A unique twin-tail, eyes that looked at her opponent as if they were less than human, and a stubborn face that resembled a corrupt aristocrat.
Naturally, it was the first time that Ami saw her face from the viewpoint of the ‘enemy’.
“Cutie……!”
Cutie Majoram stomped the ground with her shoe, and all of the dirt transformed into bugs.
They were easier to use than animals, and Cutie’s foe was Ami, who was now an ‘unconditional target of hatred’.
She did not think about how bad it looked.
No, in fact, using a swarm of bug familia instead of animals could be said to be more fitting for the Cutie that had now turned into an evil woman.
“I’m going to kill you. I’ll do anything it takes-”
“Wait, Cutie! I’m Ami! We were travelling together!”
“Don’t say stuff that makes no sense! You’re the enemy. I should hate you more than anyone!”
“Cutie……”
“Go, my familia!”
She thrust her hand forward, and the bugs crawling on the ground all flew up at the same time.