Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 16 - Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

PYTHIE FREDERICA

  Princess Deluge

The door wasn’t locked. There weren’t any traps, either. The knob would probably turn smoothly, and she’d be able to open it quietly.

She wasn’t surprised. Based on what she’d heard of Frederica thus far, she wouldn’t lock it. She was the type to anticipate either Bluebell or the magical girl who had been fighting with her—whoever would be the victor—to open the door.

The door was twice her height—Deluge smacked it to open it and went into the room. At the same time, she shot an arrow of ice into its depths, but the magical girl leaped with a spin and jumped, avoiding all the shots, then landed on the sofa without stirring up any dust, and sat.

The sounds heard from outside the room grew distant. The door quietly shut.

The Western-style room seemed a little too large even for the bedroom of an aristocrat—a whole twenty-seven-yard pool would fit into it. And sitting on the sofa at the back of the room, the magical girl raised one eyebrow like she was quite surprised. With her star decorations, her fortune-teller costume, and her mocking attitude, she was Pythie Frederica.

Frederica folded her fingers and leaned forward with deep interest.

“Now this is a surprising guest. Princess Deluge—I never imagined you would show up. I thought for sure it would be Asmona or Lazuline the Third.”

Letting her talk, Deluge swiftly ran her gaze around the area. The room mixed magical-girl elements with the image of an important person’s office: There was a chandelier with decorations of dancing magical girls, a sideboard, trophies above, girlish paintings, expensive-looking Western liquor and glasses, a bookshelf that was so large it seemed deliberate, a shag rug, a sofa, and a long desk.

There were a bunch of talismans lying on the floor, and in the middle of them was a large empty cloth bag and chains. They seemed meaningful.

But Frederica didn’t have any tools at hand that seemed like they could be used as weapons. Was she so eerily calm because she had some kind of plan, or was she ready to die, or did she feel like Deluge wasn’t enough of a threat? Her movements earlier had not been those of someone who did not know battle. She was fast and strong. Deluge made her heart settle. She reminded herself to breathe deep and long.

Frederica folded her arms the other way. With that single, artless gesture, Deluge’s heart was pounding.

“Just how did you get in here? If you defeated Asmona, then Lazuline should be here, too. If not, then mushroom spores would be flying all around… Oh, I see. You were the water-user. Even if the fungi have strong and tenacious vitality, ultra-low temperatures will freeze them all and keep them from doing their work, hmm?”

This went back to when Deluge had received the message from Bluebell.

While Deluge had looked into the possibility that this was a trap, she had cautiously proceeded with communication. On receiving the proposal for cooperation, Deluge had considered what she should do. But thinking about it now, that time spent considering had been a waste. She was going to accept anyway, so then it would have been better to use that time thinking of something else.

Even if Snow White had been against it, Deluge figured that she would surely have pushed it through, and if Snow White hadn’t opposed it, then she would have carried it out like it was the obvious thing to do. Although Snow White hadn’t opposed it, she’d been worried—largely because it was difficult for her to see the other’s intentions.

Lazuline the Third—the name made her sound like some long-established shop—was not a magical girl Deluge knew very well. But she had no choice but to believe that even just a little bit of Bluebell Candy remained inside her. Bluebell, Deluge could easily imagine coming to her in tears, clinging to her.

Snow White had been skeptical about how the Third had contacted her of her own accord without Lazuline the First knowing, but Deluge figured that Lazuline the First—Miss Tanaka, who had made Nami into the magical girl Princess Deluge—had probably manipulated her into it. She could easily imagine as much.

Deluge had listened to Bluebell’s request for help. And then today, Deluge had received an emergency message, gotten ready in a rush, and then attacked the Caspar Faction headquarters. Deluge, who was blue with a gem-filled tiara on her head, had not seemed out of place among Bluebell’s allies, and so she had remained some distance behind Bluebell, who had taken the lead while acting like Deluge was one of them.

As for the whole story up to the point of reaching this room, it was just about all as Frederica imagined. When the mushroom magical girl had appeared and Bluebell had begun fighting, Deluge had figured it would be difficult to get through. Their fight was totally equal. Deluge firing some projectiles would surely have received a fearsome counterattack, but it might also trigger the crumbling of the balance between them.

But now wasn’t the time for that. Deluge steeled herself. Just according to their discussion beforehand—that Frederica was top priority, and even if she was in trouble, she didn’t need help—she prepared herself and raced through. She felt death in every step, and feeling the endless vibrations from the floor, she put a hand to her chest and squeezed it tight.

She was lucky that four-way intersection had been half-destroyed from their attacks, making enough room to race through, and that their battle had spread out in three dimensions above them as well. Bluebell had probably been showing her some consideration. Deluge was impressed and thankful that she’d done so well when they had a fearsome enemy show up all of a sudden. Hoping to be even a bit useful, Deluge plunged the temperature of the area, freezing the spots she passed through. They wouldn’t melt for the time being, and new mushrooms would not grow there. She had been told that she didn’t need help, but since Deluge had to get rid of the spores or she couldn’t get through, it was fair to call this a necessary expense.

“Oh, this was unexpected. You’ve got me. Wonderful.” Frederica clapped her hands. She sat back on the sofa and praised Deluge like she was in a position to do so, casually applauding her.

Suddenly, Deluge thought of Dark Cutie. What would she think of Frederica? Would she call her a villain? Or would she disregard her as not a villain but just a scoundrel?

And how would she see Deluge now? Would she still call her a protagonist? Deluge didn’t see Frederica as a loathed bitter enemy. She knew she was a bad magical girl, but she was really just trying to defeat her for the sake of her goal. Did that make her a protagonist?

Her heart raced. The air was tense. She had experienced this sensation many times since the fight in the underground laboratory. People here would die. And today might just be Deluge’s turn.

If I’m a protagonist…then I won’t be afraid. I won’t be careless.

“I must give you my thanks for having surprised me. Well then,” said Frederica.

In the middle of her talking, Deluge manifested three ice arrows in midair and shot them at Frederica. She had thought she’d picked the perfect moment, right when the enemy wouldn’t expect it, but all she sent flying was the sofa. Frederica leaped into the air a hair before they hit—and then the two magical girls who’d been hidden behind the sofa stood up and repelled the ice arrows. Deluge stuck up her trident and blocked an attack from the enemy who came flying at her from beside the sideboard, clenching her teeth as she retreated a few yards and placed her back against the wall.

“And it would be rude to welcome you with empty hands, so I’ve prepared myself.”

A protagonist would not let her guard down. And a villain would be prepared.

Three magical girls who looked like triplets came at Deluge with their fists raised. Their matching cotton tunics were too plain to call magical-girl costumes. They were expressionless—not the faces of those about to fight. They were entirely eerie and without individuality.

“They are bases for Sage incarnations. Unfortunately, it’s just hastily made artificial personalities inside them, but well, they can fight. Their combat ability…is sadly quite inferior to that of the bases of the Osk and Puk Factions, but they are still incomparable to ordinary magical girls.”

Deluge shot her ice arrows as she thrust out her trident with her right hand while with her left she reached into the bag hidden by her chest and pulled out what was inside. Brenda and Catherine surged out to leap at the enemy.

  Halna Midi Meren

In the end, five reached the courtyard to become her defensive force: Mephis Pheles, Kumi-Kumi, Diko Narakunoin, Tetty Goodgripp, and Classical Lillian. Over a long period of time, Halna had taken each of them by surprise and knocked them out. She’d started with Tetty, then secured Kumi-Kumi during the homunculus incident, which had occurred to eliminate the influence of the Lab. After that, she’d gone and captured one whenever she had the chance. It had been easy for her, since she had absolute power so long as she was in the courtyard.

There was no reason for this particular selection. She’d gone for whoever had given her the chance. She’d had even more chances to take Calkoro—but Calkoro was not just a magical girl; she was also a mage. Killing her would be one thing, but replacing a mage’s body with a homunculus was nothing other than blasphemy to the First Mage.

She’d dealt with all the magical girls by making use of a technique that had only just been developed at the Lab: She fused their spirits into the homunculus bases that she’d prepared beforehand, remaking the composition of their bodies. The memories and ego of those handled this way would be swapped into the new body. The technicians at the Lab had been offered a mildly enticing proposal to hand over the technology that could be called their lifeline, leading to them having served their purpose and losing their lives. Even at the Lab, only a limited few knew about this latest homunculus technology.

The magical girls hadn’t noticed that their bodies had changed and had continued to live their lives as before. But the homunculi were made to follow Halna’s orders. Even if it was over the school intercom like just now, so long as they heard Halna’s voice, it would have immediate effect.

Although, making them her private army like this was not her main goal.

Her original goal was to search the underground ruins. The ruins would alter the bodily composition of those who entered. That was why it wasn’t permitted to stay there for long periods of time and exploration activity was limited, and no one had yet to have reached the deepest parts. But if Halna assembled plenty of specially ordered homunculus bodies with magical-girl powers as well as minimum powers of judgment, then that was something else. If she could bring a relic back from the ruins, that would become the cornerstone of the magical-girl class.

But that would come after they had overcome this crisis.

Halna had anticipated that the girls would run into their attackers on the way, and her numbers would decrease from half to one third, but the enemy must have been fewer than she’d expected, or she was lucky, as she was able to gather five girls in the courtyard. Not bad results, given what could have happened. From within the courtyard, Halna ordered them to fight back against the enemy.

In addition, she also launched the reserve forces that she’d hidden in the courtyard. The defense homunculi had been retrieved by the Lab, but she’d had them leave a few under the pretext that they would be used for mock battles. Going along with the concept of the magical-girl class, what remained was a homunculus designed in the image of Cranberry, Musician of the Forest. Since her combat abilities were an inferior copy of the original, she was useful at times like these. Even if she was inferior to the original, her strength was certified. She was stronger than the old model magical-girl homunculi while looking just like the original.

  Tetty Goodgripp

First, she clenched her right fist. When it came to grabbing things, Tetty could pride herself on the intense grip strength of her mittens. She squeezed her right hand tightly enough to crush it, but her mitten’s incredible defensive power kept it protected.

Tetty swung the fist she had clenched so, so, so, so hard at the magical girl who was attacking her. Her strike was faster than grabbing would be.

“Hey, what’s wrong, bad guy? You scared? Look at us when you fight,” Mephis said, making remarks whenever it was needed. The magical power in her voice lured in the enemies. Though the enemy should have been cautious of Tetty, Mephis’s voice caught their attention, and in that moment, Tetty fired in her fist, and when the enemy fainted in agony and pitched forward, she grabbed their neck with her left hand and broke it in her grip. She tossed the unmoving enemy away and headed for the next one.

Mephis laughed. “Not bad, Tetty!”

Thanks to the body-strengthening magic cast on her, she was keeping up with the strong and fast enemies. Though they’d acted like bullies when they’d first stepped in to try to break into the courtyard, now they were like victims running every which way, somehow managing to survive Tetty’s attacks.

“Don’t ignore me. Look at me.”

Mephis gathered the enemy’s attention while Tetty swung her fists. When their attacks went to Mephis, Kumi-Kumi, wearing the dragon art piece like armor, covered for her. Even as the enemy numbers increased, Diko appeared and disappeared, disappeared and appeared, confusing them and keeping them from settling on a target.

An apple was tossed in. That was a bomb. After hitting the ground, it immediately exploded. But the arrow-returning spell that had been cast beforehand knocked it back to the other side of the entrance, causing a large explosion outside the courtyard.

Thick black smoke billowed skyward. Tetty laughed like Mephis as she punched the enemy. She should have done this from the start. Making up right away and working together with everyone to boost class morale—that was what the student rep should be like. Worrying about how to apologize would get her nowhere and resolve nothing. She was very thankful to Satou for helping her out.

  Kumi-Kumi

When the hatchet came swinging down, the head of the dragon guarded her, and when a hatchet came spinning around from behind, the dragon’s tail smacked it down. Until just a moment ago, the dragon had been nothing more than an art piece with no magic on it, but now it moved with energy as if it were alive, protecting Kumi-Kumi.

The impact of being repelled by the dragon made the hatchet enemy leap back. Right where she landed, atop the flagstones, was the trap Kumi-Kumi had laid. The moment the enemy’s feet touched it, the magic Kumi-Kumi had cast came undone. The sand cube she’d fitted underneath the flagstone lost its strength and returned to being just soft sand, and when the enemy’s feet got tangled up, Kumi-Kumi charged the enemy, biting her arm with the dragon’s teeth.

With every move to attack or defend, the dragon lost parts. The crystallization of Kumi-Kumi’s effort, which she had brought out from the classroom thinking she absolutely didn’t want to lose this, was gradually being damaged. But she couldn’t let that bother her now. It was more important to beat down the enemies that had come to the courtyard. This wasn’t just an obligation. She was having so much fun.

Before, Kumi-Kumi would never have been able to take action so quickly. She certainly would have been pointlessly worrying about unnecessary things, like whether her classmates were safe, what Adelheid and Lillian were doing, or why no contact had come to them.

She could fight while free from obstructive thoughts, and that was so wonderful. For someone like Kumi-Kumi, who was bad at thinking, there could be no happier thing.

  Classical Lillian

Lillian had loved stories ever since she was young. She was fond of stories of unique protagonists whose quirks would lead them into great exploits. She didn’t remember how old she’d been when she’d first realized that she would never take the lead herself. She’d already given up on it as far back as she could remember, and maybe further.

It wasn’t as if she had given up on life. A protagonist would always shoulder a heavy responsibility. With Lillian’s personality, she was sure to be crushed by that responsibility. So then rather than being a protagonist, she should take on a supporting role. Even if she couldn’t score the point herself, if she could lead to a score through a good assist, it would be no overstatement to call her a part of the protagonist.

There had been some changes since she’d become able to transform into a magical girl, but her fundamental nature had not changed. Even now that she was a magical girl, she couldn’t bring herself to want to become a protagonist. There were so many unique magical girls in the Elite Guard. And the magical-girl class was packed with even more uniqueness. They were the ones who would become protagonists. Lillian didn’t have even a shred of courage when she wasn’t transformed, but she could manage a couple of shreds so long as she was transformed.

When she was human, she ranked even lower, and she couldn’t even bother to care about herself. She didn’t really take care of her hair, but she didn’t get it cut, either, leaving it as is. Even if she had put effort into herself as a human, it could only go so far. Dressing herself up wouldn’t make her like Lightning. She couldn’t manage a supporting role in her human form. But as a magical girl, things were different. A magical girl had possibilities.

If there was a fight, she could back them up and encourage those who were down, and if something happened, she could support them. With all this overflowing uniqueness around her, she was very grateful that she could do her job, even if she wasn’t all that great herself.

That still had not changed. For Kumi-Kumi, who was swinging the dragon around, Lillian used some rope she’d woven to reinforce the construction so that it wouldn’t come apart, and by using the yarn she’d set on the ground, she gave Tetty and Mephis, who were fighting on the front lines, opportunities to attack. Throwing Lillian-woven knives, wielding a Lillian-woven whip, and raising a Lillian-woven shield, Classical Lillian was fighting with even more spirit than normal.

Looking down on this from above and seeing how she was fighting, Lillian was satisfied, and she smiled. Her life choices as Classical Lillian weren’t wrong, after all. Just because she wasn’t a protagonist didn’t mean she couldn’t make great contributions. Helping the protagonist while not taking on the heavy responsibility of that role was a valid way to live.

  Mephis Pheles

Mephis slammed a low kick at the magical girl like a standing lizard, aiming for her ankle. But having kicked, Mephis staggered from the recoil, and when the lizard bared her fangs and came to attack, Diko vanished for a moment to go into a dropkick, timing it just right to slip through the lizard’s defense and get a clean hit on her head, flinging the lizard’s head way back.

Diko gave Mephis a smile that only went to her lips. Normally, Mephis might have been angry, but now she smiled back calmly. She meant to say with her smile, “Your personality hasn’t changed at all.”

“Lizard! Don’t you ignore me!”

Mephis was not handling any tough enemies. She left them to those who were originally dealing with them. Mephis used her words to draw the enemies’ attention while Tetty took advantage of that to approach them from behind, grab an arm, and break it off. Her magic mittens didn’t care if you had thick scales or tough skin.

The lizard cried out, and when she opened her mouth wide, Mephis came from the left and Diko came from the right at the same time to fire in knee strikes, scattering a few teeth—when the lizard still tried to reach out an arm, Kumi-Kumi’s dragon wrapped around her, strangling her neck. Ten seconds later, the lizard fell with a thud.

They turned back to the entrance, looking for the next one, but there were no more enemies. It seemed there were fewer than they’d thought, and their morale must have been quite low. Either they had all gone down, or they had judged that running was better than everyone going down and had fled—one of the two.

Mephis bumped arms with Diko and smirked, receiving a smile in return. Next, she high-fived Kumi-Kumi. Then she bumped fists with Lillian, and finally, she shook hands with Tetty.

They’d fought well, her included. They’d all managed to fight as one. Even Group Two as a team had never clicked this well. The magic support from the principal had also been wonderful, healing their wounds, repulsing projectile weapons, and greatly bumping up their physical abilities. They’d really been made to realize how great mages’ magic was.

Remembering the principal, suddenly, Mephis snapped out of it.

What had happened with Adelheid? Why had she gotten contacted when Mephis, who was in charge, hadn’t gotten any message? Kana had gone to Umemizaki alone—was she okay? What were their other classmates doing, and where? Ranyi and Diko had run off to where Adelheid was fighting, but shouldn’t they have stopped them or something? Hadn’t it been the feeling of alienation at having been excluded that had moved Mephis into action? Wasn’t there a chance that the issue of Adelheid had been a misunderstanding or an error in communication, and they could have resolved it with a little talking? Weren’t the intruders lying in the courtyard who they’d just punched down actually Mephis’s allies? Hadn’t she obstructed the people she was supposed to have been supporting? And plus—

“Don’t let your guard down. More are coming.”

The sound of the principal’s voice drew her back to reality. Oh yeah—there were still things she had to do. Mephis faced the magical girls who poured in through the door.

  Snow White

The only one in the empty classroom under the broken floor was Calkoro. She was moaning, with lacerations and burns on her legs that made her struggle to even walk.

Calkoro had said that Tetty had also fallen through the floor with her. She’d been defending her from the eyeballs that attacked from above, but then as soon as she’d heard the school intercom, Tetty had ignored the eyeballs and raced out of the classroom, leaving her behind about to die, Calkoro said with added complaints.

Snow White and the others had also heard the intercom message. It had told them to gather in the courtyard.

“This was the principal? Was there a broadcast room in this school?” asked Snow White.

“Ummm…I don’t know. This building shouldn’t have a broadcast room… Maybe she gave the announcement from the Umemizaki main building?”

“But that’s not the kind of announcement that you’d let students in the main building hear,” said Rappy. “Kana went that way, but if it were for her as an individual, wouldn’t it have said that?”

“Maybe there’s some facility hidden around somewhere?” Snow White suggested.

“No, there’s no place you could hide…,” Calkoro said, “except—yes. Even I couldn’t get into the courtyard. I believe it’s that, or the principal’s office.”

“Then I’d guess that it’s the courtyard,” said Snow White. “Even if the principal announced that from her office, if she ran into the enemy on the way to the courtyard to give directions…she’d be in trouble. I think it would be natural for her to contact everyone from the courtyard and gather them there.”

“Mei doesn’t understand why you’re bothered about the announcement.”

“Why so bothered?”

“Bother-bother?”

“Well, I mean, if the other students obeyed the announcement, then that’ll mean that they went to the courtyard,” Rappy said, but then immediately followed that with, “But the enemy heard it, too. If they go to the courtyard, then enemies’ll gather there, and won’t it be dangerous?” she finished, shooting down her own opinion.

Calkoro shook her head. “But…let’s head for the courtyard, after all. Everyone else might also be headed that way. At the very least, it seems like Tetty has gone there. Plus, this is the principal, so I don’t think she would tell us to gather in the courtyard without any sort of preparation. There may be a shelter or something we can use with that sort of purpose,” she said, with an expression like she was clinging to a faint hope.

Miss Ril nodded, and Rappy, who’d been binding Calkoro’s legs with her magic wrap, kicked the leg she’d just treated and said, “Then we’ve gotta go.” Calkoro let out a little yelp, groaning with tears in her eyes.

Was the announcement as attractive as Calkoro claimed? Snow White couldn’t quite bring herself to agree. There was also something strange about how Tetty had left behind the wounded Calkoro to obey the announcement and leave. It wasn’t as if Snow White had known Tetty Goodgripp for all that long, but she didn’t think she would do such a thing.

“Wait,” Tepsekemei murmured briefly, and Snow White looked at her. Tepsekemei had her usual cool look on her face as she pointed down the hallway. “Lots are coming.”

The enemy, who they’d beaten into unconsciousness, were tied up and abandoned in a corner of the classroom, with their arms and legs broken off. If more had come to save them, the odds were high that they’d come in even greater numbers. The magical girls spread out, raising their weapons in the direction of the classroom entrance.

Snow White’s grip on her weapon tightened. This was strange. The voices of the heart she could hear were off.

“Everyone, watch out. Something is…this is—”

Snow White tried to warn everyone, but she didn’t know what she should say. Something incomprehensible, something that shouldn’t be possible was happening.

A magical girl opened the door artlessly to appear—she was not wearing a mask. She was someone Snow White knew, smiling at them.

“So you were safe! What about everyone—?”

Calkoro wasn’t able to finish her sentence. From behind the smiling magical girl appeared a new figure, and from behind her, yet another, one after another.

  Pythie Frederica

She was playing it cool, but on the inside, she was enjoying the thrills. Yes, you must never forget to enjoy yourself. There was no pleasure to be had if all you felt was panic, and you would simply lose.

Princess Deluge was an unexpected, rare visitor, but Frederica did not panic. The unpredictable would always happen anyway. Lazuline the First was a nasty, nasty opponent, and she was betting her own survival on this, so it was only natural that Frederica’s predictions would be off.

But having your predictions be off and being unable to deal with that were completely different things. Frederica didn’t believe that she could fight with Lazuline the First without two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine layers of preparation.

Base number one clasped a blade in only her left hand, while she made to swing a punch with her free hand—her opponent tried to block that with her helmet but was flung dramatically backward. Of course. Even if they were hastily manufactured, they were far stronger physically than the average magical girl. But even as Brenda was being struck, she spun around and set her foot on the opposite wall. Base number one was already right in front of her and swinging a fist, striking Brenda again. But right before the fist connected, Brenda generated a blade in front of her face, and it dug deep into the base’s fist. Blood flowed out from under Brenda’s warped helmet, dirtying her face and reddening her eyes, but there was a strong light in them. She was different from before, when she’d been fighting in the ruins that Puk Puck had occupied. Back then, even leaving aside how she’d been being mind-controlled, she’d been fighting like she was swept away. Now, you could see her will. She had grown as a magical girl.

As for base number two, since her opponent had projectile weapons, she was more aggressive about getting closer and punching at her. Catherine was stuck constantly using her cannon as a shield and was unable to go on the offensive—she kept getting hit, getting flung right and then left. Frederica had also witnessed the bombardment at the ruins—that had been too powerful. It was one thing if she didn’t care if she blew herself up, so long as she could kill Frederica. But from the way she was fighting, it didn’t look like she was going for a kamikaze run. Another punch sent her flying and slammed her into the door.

“Luxury Mode: Burst.”

Deluge went to help her. While drawing base number three along with her, she sliced at base number two, swinging around her trident, then suddenly crouched down. Her crouching down opened up a firing line between base number three and Catherine, and the cannon fired. No—not the cannon. There was a continuous fire of smaller bullets like a machine gun, hitting base number three right in the face. She lifted both her arms to guard her face, but she spurted blood, and now she was the one getting slammed into the edge of the room. Brenda slid in, balling up her small body even smaller to pass under the bullets. Base number one, which had been chasing after her, couldn’t get through the same way and so stopped, and the trident thrust in to get her hard from behind.

Brenda swung her blades as if she was dancing. She moved in tandem with Deluge to keep the enemy from fixing their aim on her, abandoning defense to focus on attack, and the more blades she swung, the faster they became. Her blood flowed and her armor warped, but she still took no heed to the damage she took. The hair of the base was sliced off, her blood gushed out, her fingers flew off, and her knee was broken.

Catherine sprayed bullets as she moved, jumping off the wall as she leaped around, and all the while, she never let up off the trigger. It appeared as if she were firing randomly and with no discrimination, but she never hit an ally. The bases alone were forced into defense and evasion.

Frederica’s eyes slid around the circumference of the room as a sigh slipped from her. She had thought that artificial magical girls, be they Shufflins, the Princess Series, or the ABCD Series, were not to her taste, that they were not magical girls in the correct sense, but perhaps that had been prejudice on her part. Their relaxed limbs, the way they worked together like a single body, and the way that they continued to spin around without ever stopping was so beautiful. Ashamed at how shallow her view had been, Frederica leaped up to the ceiling.

She felt the three pairs of eyes of her opponents painfully well. As they fought, they had always been aiming for Frederica in the corner of the room. The three bases, ordered to defend Frederica, were forced into a handicapped battle to keep her safe. Due to their inferior intellect and faint sentience as a low-class homunculi, they had failed to exhibit their strong physicality to the utmost and were being pushed back.

Seeing this, Frederica revised her orders. “You need only cover for me minimally!”

At the same time, she went for a flying kick—right before she would have intersected with the trident that Deluge thrust out, she twisted around, swishing aside the spear points with the hem of her skirt to land, grabbing the carpet hairs in both hands to sweep Deluge’s feet out from under her.

“Did you think I would only watch from behind?”

Frederica withdrew her legs, ripping away the carpet she gripped to throw it up in front of Deluge’s eyes.

The attack wasn’t meant to cause damage. This was to block her vision and make her lose composure. When an arrow of ice flew at Frederica from behind, she struck it away with a back kick, then did a half-turn, skirt fluttering, and smacked the second arrow. She then grabbed a trophy from the sideboard and threw it at Deluge with the accuracy of a first-class baseball player.

Deluge took a half step back to evade, but the movement was too large. That combined with the carpet blind left her unable to evade the punch from base number one, which approached her from the right side, and though Deluge raised her trident to block, she was flung up to the ceiling. With a half-turn in the air, she put a foot on the ceiling, and the chandelier audibly swayed. It was quite impressive that was all a punch from the base did to her—but now Frederica had bought herself some time, if not much. While Deluge was temporarily retreating to the ceiling, the three bases and Frederica would charge Catherine and Brenda.

Frederica carefully crushed the arrows of ice aiming for the bases with her skirt. The type of arrow that was not controlled by her will, but rather on automatic pilot, was perfect for Deluge to use while wielding her trident, but they moved too simply.

Back in the underground laboratory, Frederica had watched Deluge through Stanczyka, and at the amusement park, she had watched her through Ripple. And under the pretense of investigating the incident, she had thoroughly looked into the way Deluge had fought in the ruins where Puk Puck had been holed up. So she had a lot of information.

On the other hand, how well did Deluge know Frederica? Even if she had heard some things from Snow White or Lazuline, she couldn’t assume that was all Frederica had. And this wasn’t just about Frederica herself—to begin with, she didn’t know even a fraction of anything about this room.

Base numbers one and two went to Brenda, while number three went to Catherine. Brenda, who was now handling two on one, backed up, placing the bookshelf at her back as she generated an additional sword, readying herself with a blade in each hand.

Unfortunately, that’s nearly certain death for you.

Brenda’s back touched a book, and a device activated. A blade like a butter knife flew out from the bookshelf to thrust into Brenda’s undefended back. It pierced her easily, as if Brenda’s armor and her tough skin and flesh didn’t even exist. She spat blood, and while she struggled, number one and number two, with no care to injuring their own fists, fired in one, two strikes, beating her to a pulp.

Deluge bounded off the ceiling to come down between them, and the two bases backed away. But Brenda was already beyond fighting. Catherine howled with anger and readied her cannon. Number three’s fists sank into her side, but even as Catherine spat blood, she remained in a firing stance.

Frederica’s brow furrowed slightly. Now that the sisters had been beaten to shreds, they were mad with anger and moving differently. They hadn’t done anything that seemed like suicide attacks before, but she couldn’t say for sure that the next attack would not be.

Frederica reached a hand out to the wall and pressed a slight swelling under the wallpaper.

The chandelier that decorated the ceiling trembled as if resonating with something, and without a moment’s delay, it fell. Catherine and number three, who had been attacking her, both were caught underneath it. To be mad with rage was, in other words, to lose your powers of attention. The chandelier burst with light, and the two magical girls touching it spasmed and stopped moving.

Frederica sighed sadly.

“What a truly regrettable thing to do to that specially made chandelier, decorated with charming magical girls,” she said as she did a half-turn, then turned back the other way, skirt fluttering to strike down an arrow of ice. Her skirt was heavier than before. Its power had increased.

“Luxury Mode: Full Burst!”

Deluge was enveloped in a dazzling light. She stabbed number one, which was mindlessly continuing to punch Brenda, right through the back, and kicked her down. Number two reacted to that and tried to twist away, but she couldn’t move. Brenda’s blood, flowing down onto the carpet, froze, capturing number two’s leg. Deluge stuck her in the neck with her trident and was already facing Frederica.

Frederica got glimpses of her expression through the light—it was all rage.

Frederica thought she was beautiful, and she also thought this was a waste. After all her rage at her comrades’ deaths and displaying greater power than usual, her wishes would still not come true, and she would fall in vain.

Deluge ran. Frederica was at the back of the room, while Deluge was near the entrance. They were far apart, but that wouldn’t be a problem. And right now, Deluge’s speed and attacks would outdo Frederica’s reflexes.

“But you have no chance. How very sad.”

One step to the east from the center of the room, in a spot where there should have been nothing in particular, Deluge’s body bounced in the opposite direction she’d been going. Deluge hadn’t jumped of her own will. She’d simply made high-speed contact with the invisible presence that had always been there.

She fell backward, broke the long desk, and bounced. When pieces of the desk came flying, Frederica adroitly dodged them. Deluge groaned, her body trembling. After hitting it at that speed, she wouldn’t be able to move properly.

Once, an invisible barrier had been used in the B City region to lock up some magical girls—Frederica included. What Deluge had just crashed into was just such a barrier made into the shape of a board, about the size of one tatami.

Brenda had been cut up in spite of her protective armor and her magical-girl toughness; Catherine was rendered immobile from the hit by the chandelier. Frederica was using magic items. The Caspar Faction was lacking in funds and such items, so when the Puk Faction sold off everything in their storage, the Caspar Faction received those items from the wealthy person who had bought them. They worked so well for such a bargain.

And it hadn’t just been the items; there had also been Frederica’s reading of the situation. Setting up the traps with thoughts of, She’s sure to touch this place during the fight, or, She’s sure to stand there, had been so much fun.

Frederica had figured that Deluge would try to come straight for her, so she’d moved nonchalantly to position the board-shaped barrier on the line between the two of them, then lured her in. That had also been fun. A prank was made for the pleasure of the one setting it up.

The functionality of the barrier was no different from that which had even managed to trap magical girls like Sonia Bean and Archfiend Pam. No matter how powerful Deluge was, she wouldn’t break it, and touching it would make her go numb.

Even as she fell, Deluge glared at Frederica. Though all the movement she could manage was trembling, her gaze was murderously piercing, with none of its fighting spirit lost. She was just like a beast. A shiver of pleasure ran down Frederica’s spine.

“Wonderful. The way you don’t give up until the end is worthy of praise. Though it brings me chagrin, I will offer the finishing blow to bring a beautiful conclusion to that attitude of yours.”

She took a step toward Deluge and raised her foot. Stepping on her neck to break it would be nice. Just as depicted by artists of every time and place, a weakling being stepped on was picturesque.

But her foot did not step down. Frederica turned to the door, eyes wide, and she leaped back. While leaping backward, she scooped up Deluge’s trident, landing on one foot atop the sofa with springs sticking out as she quietly stood on guard, facing the door. Contrastively with her soundless stance, her heart was pounding louder than ever.

She was here. The presence that had appeared on the other side of the door was the one she’d felt countless times, in the places where magical girls she had tried to hire had been attacked. The presence of Pukin opened the door.

The problem would be the first strike. Many magical girls had been unable to evade it and had died. But Frederica had evaded Pukin’s attacks in the past. She remembered them. The spacing, timing—atop this sofa, she should be just barely out of reach from the entrance to this room. She would lure her into attacking where she couldn’t reach and jump back while she activated a trap to catch the attacker.

The door opened. A magical girl with one eye, one arm, and a drawn ninja sword raced into the room.

Ripple…?

The unexpected situation slowed her reaction by just another half a moment. She’d jump backward—“No,” she cried in her head. If it were Pukin, the optimal distance would be farther away. But that wasn’t true for Ripple.

Ripple leaped straight for Frederica, drawing her ninja sword at the same time. In terms of pure speed of the blade, Pukin was far faster. But closing the distance on a ninja’s legs while swinging her sword, it wasn’t even about fast or slow—she was just a different beast. Having moved here anticipating a thrust from Pukin, Frederica couldn’t manage to evade. Right before the blade reached her neck, Frederica blocked it with the trident. They strained against one another, blades clashing as the two magical girls were brought to a halt. How should she move from here to escape from this predicament?

But faster than Frederica’s thoughts could gather, countless shuriken and kunai flew in from the open door behind Ripple.

She’d already thrown them before opening the door?

The shuriken and kunai drew an arc, avoiding Ripple and attacking the frozen Frederica.

One, two, four, eight stuck in her shoulders, her chest, in her back. Kunai and shuriken pierced her throat, stomach, arms, legs.

You really have…done it…

The blood flowed out of her. Her consciousness faded. She could tell that she was nearing her end. She wasn’t capable of burning with anger and coming to her feet or crawling away in an attempt to escape. No more energy remained in her to do so.

She wanted to see Ripple’s face, at least, but her vision grew dim until she could no longer see anything. She couldn’t hear any voices. There was no sound. In a space where there was nothing else, Frederica made to breathe a sigh, but she couldn’t even do that.

  Old Blue

After walking over the body of the magical girl who was burnt to a crisp, fallen with a crossbow in her hands, there lay a blue magical girl with the motif of a goldfish, pierced by a total of five arrows. It was Ranyi. Old Blue couldn’t see Diko. Was she fighting somewhere else, or was she no longer alive?

Lazuline stepped up to Ranyi and took her hand. It was sticky with blood. Two of the arrows had pierced her vitals, and the amount of bleeding said it was a fatal wound.

She was drifting between life and death, but it seemed she was barely conscious. When Ranyi realized who it was who had taken her hand, she opened her mouth slightly with a smile. Lazuline squeezed her hand back tightly and whispered, “You’ve done an amazing job… I truly am glad I made you a student.”

It seemed like Ranyi tried to say something, but nothing would come out. A single teardrop fell from her eye, and her hand slowly went slack, her body cooled, and she died with a smile on her face. Old Blue stroked Ranyi’s now-human face and closed her eyes, then laid her down on the spot.

“Stay there for now. I’ll come get you later.”

Old Blue’s magic allowed her to see the true nature of people and things. She could lead her students in the direction she wanted, though this depended on the talents of the disciple. Unfortunately, she couldn’t say that Ranyi had been overflowing with potential. Her physical abilities were pretty decent, but her mental flaws stood out. She was timid, unable to be bold because she worried about what others thought. She wasn’t honest with herself; she wanted to look good in front of other people and didn’t mind if they didn’t actually think highly of her.

If she experienced a moment of great growth, then it would be triggered by the stirring of her emotions. Lazuline had nurtured Ranyi along the lines of her potential, guiding her so that her magic could grow in the right situations. If she experienced a truly hopeless threat to her life, then her natural cowardice would cause her to explode, and she would use magic far beyond her original capability. Her magic, which normally reached a very short distance, would break through its limits and connect her with the faraway person she most wanted near to her. That was how Old Blue and the others had come here.

The person Ranyi most wanted near her was Old Blue. It was for this purpose that Old Blue had greatly decreased the amount that they would see each other, and once Snow White had transferred in, she had made that a reason to cut off contact, to strengthen her desire to meet her teacher, to ask her advice even further.

She had foreseen that this would happen to Ranyi—that she would lose her life. The exceptional intuition that was seen as a vital condition for being a Lazuline was sharpest in the eldest of them, Lazuline the First, Old Blue. She was using magic for it, so she would never be wrong. She saw how people would die with almost clairvoyant accuracy, and she had put together a strategy without even talking to the Third.

“Okay, everyone spread out now… These grounds aren’t that large, so it’s not as if we’ll be splitting up. We’ll deploy our numbers across the area to suppress the enemy.”

“Are you going to stay here, boss?” a subordinate asked. “That’s boring.”

Old Blue replied with a smile. “I might remain here, and I might not.”

“You mean you won’t know where you’ll be?”

“It’s fine for my place to be indefinite. There’s meaning in what no one knows. When you don’t know who the commander is, then you can’t target them.”

Her subordinates had all been doing as they pleased, and at that remark from her, about half of them nodded. The other half may not even have been listening, but it was fine for them to be like that.

“Well then, everyone spread out. We’ll destroy the enemy, and after suppressing the courtyard, we invade the ruins and steal the relic.”

Appearing from the path that Ranyi had spent her life to connect, her subordinates ran off. She had prepared enough people to bury this school. No matter how many were consumed, it would never end.

While running along, losing herself among her subordinates, Old Blue prayed for Ranyi’s passage to the world of the dead and for Diko’s safety.

  Thunder-General Adelheid

Adelheid was confused. She could hear footsteps. There were multiple. They were right there. She understood right away whose they were, but she secretly denied it.

“Hey,” she said to Lightning.

“…What is it?”

“What’re those footsteps?”

“Ahhh.” Lightning opened her eyes a crack and closed them again immediately. She was continuing to breathe shallowly like it pained her, body slack. “…Adelheid.”

“What?”

“I won’t insult you for this. Run—now.”

“Huh?”

Without replying, Lightning weakly reached out an arm, and Adelheid took her hand. Underneath her glove, ripped in battle, she could see something. She put her fingers into it and peeled it off all at once.

Branded on the back of Lightning’s white hand was a heart mark, and beside it was a little number nine. Adelheid’s eyebrows furrowed.

“Some people stronger than me may be coming.”

Lightning was branded with a nine of hearts. She could hear footsteps. Adelheid understood something, but she hadn’t managed to digest it. She was unable to move, and she just kept staring at Lightning on the ground.

The footsteps were nearing them. There were multiple. They were so close.

“Oh, hello.”

When she looked in the direction of the voice, from around the corner, the owner of that voice showed herself. What appeared was Princess Lightning. Adelheid looked back at Princess Lightning for a while, stunned, and then looked over at the fallen Princess Lightning. And then her eyes turned once more to the new Princess Lightning.

There were more Lightnings. Three of them were lined up in a row, with even more Lightnings packed behind them. In a voice that only Lightning at her feet could hear, Adelheid muttered, “What in the hell?”