With a cry I couldn’t quite make sense of, Hieta’s appearance shifted. The armor he usually wore vanished, replaced by old, shabby gear. In his hand, he gripped a weapon unlike any ordinary sword; it had no blade, only a blunt iron club twisted into a spiral shape. It glowed with a dull reddish hue, as if it had been forged in an eternal fire.
That weapon was the Greatsword of the Firelinking Ceremony, also known as the Spiral Sword.
“Haaah!”
With a guttural shout, Hieta swung the Spiral Sword forward.
Whoosh!
With the heavy, clean sound of air being cleaved by a horizontal slash, the Spiral Sword slammed into Kurumi’s side.
“Ghk...!”
Caught off guard by the sudden assault, Kurumi clutched her side, barely managing to keep her footing. But Hieta didn't give her a moment to breathe; he continued his onslaught without a word.
He stomped hard against the floor and leaped forward, driving the Spiral Sword deep into Kurumi’s staggering stomach. However, as expected of a spirit, not even a scratch appeared on her belly, let alone a gaping hole.
“Eat this!”
Taking advantage of Hieta’s brief surprise, Kurumi sprang backward, summoned a gun, and opened fire.
Bang! Bang bang bang!
A storm of bullets rained down on Hieta. He dodged every single shot with a series of precise rolls, then reached into his coat and hurled something toward her.
It was a black sphere. The moment it reached Kurumi, it burst apart in a violent flash of fire.
“Kyaa!”
“Tch.”
Hieta clicked his tongue and swung the Spiral Sword at her again, but suddenly, Shido stepped directly into his path.
“What the—!”
Hieta tried to abort the attack at the sudden appearance of Shido, but the momentum of the Spiral Sword was already committed. The blade surged forward, closing in on Shido. Just before impact, Kurumi grabbed Shido and yanked him back.
“I can’t believe it! You! Are you an idiot?!”
Kurumi snapped, her voice laced with genuine exasperation. It was exactly the kind of reaction one only gave if the hostage still held significant value. Reassured that he was indeed useful, Shido let out a quiet sigh of relief and spoke.
“That settles it. I’m worth something as a hostage. Stop the spacequake. And undo this barrier too! Otherwise, I’ll bite my tongue off and die!”
“What on earth are you saying?”
Unable to withstand Shido’s desperate threat, Kurumi snapped her fingers. The barrier surrounding the school vanished instantly, and the spacequake alarm fell silent.
“Good. Then one more thing.”
Riding the momentum, Shido made one final request.
“There’s more?”
“Kurumi. Let me give you a chance to start over.”
“You’re still insisting on that...? I have no need for it.”
“You don’t know that! You might end up liking an ordinary, peaceful life more than you expect! If not, there’s no way you would’ve had fun dating me, right?”
“But something like that...”
Kurumi tried to deny it. She told herself she wasn't that kind of person, that she could never find solace in a peaceful existence. But Shido spoke faster than she could think.
“You can do it! With me! Your sins have to be washed away over the course of your whole life! Even so, Kurumi... no matter what mistakes you’ve made, that’s no reason I shouldn’t save you!”
Shido reached out his hand. Kurumi hesitated, staring at the hand extended toward her. Just as she was about to take it—
Crunch!
“Nooo~ You can’t fall for words like that~”
A white hand suddenly pierced through Kurumi’s stomach, and another version of Kurumi’s voice rang out.
“Honestly~”
“Ku, Kurumi? How...?”
“I guess I was too young back then.”
White hands erupted from the ground, grabbing Shido’s ankles.
“Let’s stop with this frustrating nonsense~”
As the speaking Kurumi approached Shido and reached out her hand,
Fwoosh!
A wall of fire roared upward, severing Kurumi’s hand in an instant.
“Haa. Itsuka-kun, between your suicide act and your attempt to block me... you’re far too reckless.”
The wall of fire had been created by Hieta. Just as before, his weapon was blazing with intense heat, as if the flames were an inherent part of its power.
Shido was briefly startled by the sudden eruption of fire, then quickly apologized for the scolding.
“...Sorry. But if I hadn’t done that, I thought you were going to kill Kurumi.”
“Well, the lady’s clone has already been killed by the original lady, so that’s that.”
Hieta spoke while staring at the fading embers of the fire. Then, a figure landed gracefully between Shido and Hieta.
“Mana?!”
“If [Knight] hadn’t stopped her, that would’ve been dangerous.”
It was Takamiya Mana. She had rushed to the rooftop after receiving word that an enormous spirit-wave reaction had appeared at Raizen High School.
“Ahh~ To burn through a spirit body that easily. What an incredible flame~”
Kurumi reappeared beyond the vanishing wall of fire.
“But I have no intention of dying~”
With a playful lilt, she raised her unburned hand and shouted,
“Come out! [Zaphkiel]!!!”
A giant clock manifested behind Kurumi.
“[Dalet]”
As she murmured the word, a shadow emerged from the clock and infused her gun. She shot herself with it, and the arm that had been incinerated by Hieta’s attack began to regenerate, as if time itself were being rewound.
“That’s an amazing recovery.”
“Kihihihit! Wrong~ I only turned back time~ Now, now!!! Shall we begin!!!”
The moment she finished speaking, Mana and Hieta collided with Kurumi in a flurry of steel.
******
Takamiya-san and I swung our swords at Tokisaki simultaneously.
Clang!
But since it was our first time fighting side by side, our coordination was off, and we ended up colliding with each other’s attack paths.
“Kihihihit! Of course you wouldn’t have perfect teamwork from the start~ [Aleph]!”
Tokisaki laughed at our clumsiness, uttered a different command, and shot herself. In an instant, she vanished from sight.
“Mana!”
“Takamiya-san!”
Tokisaki reappeared out of nowhere in front of Takamiya-san and struck. After taking the hit, Takamiya-san tried to rush her again, but Tokisaki flickered behind her, kicked her away, and activated another ability.
“[Zayin]”
“Useless—!”
Hit by the bullet Tokisaki fired, Takamiya-san froze in midair, as if time itself had stopped for her.
“Time?”
I felt like I was finally grasping the nature of her ability. But before I could process it, Tokisaki’s follow-up attack sent Takamiya-san crashing violently to the ground.
“Damn it!”
I caught the falling Takamiya-san and quickly put some distance between us. Just then, the rooftop door burst open and two people appeared.
“Shido!”
“You guys!”
“Oh my, everyone’s here~”
Tohka and Tobiichi. Tohka was in her spirit form, while Tobiichi wore a CR-Unit similar to Takamiya-san’s.
“To think so many of you would gang up on little old me. But today, I’m serious too~ Right, all of us?”
As Tokisaki spoke, white hands began rising from beneath our feet. Before long, those hands gradually took on Tokisaki’s shape, transforming into identical copies of her. So that was the secret behind the clones.
“...Time, clones, rewind. I see. Tokisaki’s ability is related to time.”
“Correct~ This is my past. This is my history. These are my forms across different timelines~ Do you understand now? Why you can’t kill me.”
My guess was right. Tokisaki’s ability was time-based. The regeneration, the freezing of Takamiya-san, and now the summoning of clones. Hearing her confirm it only made the ability seem more terrifying.
“Then, shall we finish this~”
More Tokisakis surrounded us, every single one of them wielding a gun. One wrong move and we could be shot dead. I would be fine, but the others weren't immortal; I couldn't afford to be careless.
“Kihihihit! Now I can finally... Ah, right. I should carve despair into you so you can never tempt me again.”
Tokisaki raised her hand.
“No way!!!”
Wiiiiiing!
“This time for sure, a lot of people are going to die~?”
“Don’t do it!!!”
Despite Itsuka-kun’s shout, Tokisaki triggered a spacequake. Or rather, she attempted to.
The distortion in space that had begun to form in the air suddenly vanished.
“What’s going on?”
“Didn’t know? A spacequake can be canceled out if, at the moment it’s generated, you collide it with a vibration of the same scale.”
A familiar voice echoed from above. Dressed like a celestial maiden with flames flickering around her body, the commander made a flashy entrance, neutralizing Tokisaki’s spacequake.
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