The Spirit swung her sword without end.
In earnest, to kill the one before her. Or to make him into something close to that.
She could not forgive the white-haired girl who had taken something precious from her.
She wanted to kill the girl who had killed the only being that had ever affirmed her existence.
The cold light that had been fading from those eyes circled through the Spirit’s mind.
And so the Spirit killed the white-haired girl, killed her, killed her, killed her. With nothing but the purpose of killing, she swung the great sword and unleashed a storm of blade strikes.
Boom! Crash!
The ground was cut away.
With a single swing, the cliff was cleaved and space itself was cut.
After that, the blade strikes that flew only toward one girl left deep scars across the ground.
“...”
The white-haired girl looked down at her own hands with trembling eyes.
She was thinking of the boy she had killed with those hands.
Even though the shield that had instinctively sprung up had already been torn to shreds by a single attack. Even though miracles were pouring down with clear malice.
Without showing any reaction, she looked at the hand that had pulled the trigger to kill the Spirit.
The fingertips of the murderer who had killed the boy she had loved were shaking violently.
A vision, as if soaked in blood, was layered over her hands.
The sticky blood clinging there was the boy’s.
“...”
The girl seeing that illusion could not say a word, and could only blame herself and sink into despair.
To that girl, the Spirit declared:
“—Die.”
At the sentence of death, vast spiritual power began gathering into the angel.
As it gathered and gathered, and the blade fused with the throne took on a gloomy light.
Thud
Something landed on the ground.
The shape of whatever had fallen from the sky could not be seen through the dust.
The Spirit swept a hand and raised wind to scatter the dust.
What emerged was a strange being in medieval armor.
The armor, warped and twisted by fire, gave off an eerie presence, and the being itself radiated a sinister air.
“...Who are you?”
“...”
Without answering, the being quietly gripped its sword.
“Move. I’m going to kill that woman.”
“...”
Again, there was no answer.
Only an emotionless gaze could be felt beyond the helmet.
“If you won’t move, I’ll kill you too!”
Even if his life was threatened.
“...”
That did not apply to Jae.
For Jae, who was denied even the freedom of death, death was as ordinary as daily life. It was like a terrible old companion that always followed at his side.
Jae simply gripped his iron sword in silence and raised it.
The blade, reflecting the sunset and shining orange, meant that Jae had become hostile to the Spirit.
“If you won’t move...”
In the end, death was what was handed down to anything that could not be reasoned with.
He could no longer delay the girl’s death.
Just before the Spirit brought down her sword, which held that gloomy light, Jae shook his head and thrust his sword straight out.
It was not an attempt to stab. It was more like he was pointing at something with the sword.
The direction he pointed toward was the empty sky. A void where nothing could be seen no matter how hard one looked up.
“Toooookaaa!!!”
From that sky, the boy’s voice suddenly rang out.
“Shido...?”
At the familiar voice, both girls looked upward.
“Aaaah!”
The boy they had thought dead was alive.
Though he was grimacing as he fell from the sky, his eyes were fixed on Toka.
“Shido, Shido!”
A dramatic reunion.
Toka caught the falling Shido and pulled him into her arms.
“It really is Shido!”
“Y-yeah. It’s me.”
“Shido...!”
She had thought she would never see him again. She had watched the spark of life fade from his eyes, had seen his gaze grow cold.
Yet for some reason, the boy had come back to life and fallen into Toka’s arms.
She did not ask why.
For Toka, the reason he had returned to life did not matter.
It was enough that the boy who had died had come back and called her name again. That alone was enough for Toka’s feelings to begin turning in a positive direction.
Watching Shido and Toka reunite, Jae turned around and looked down at the girl.
“...”
An unbelieving gaze met Jae’s as the extinguished eyes sank toward him.
Emotionless eyes crossed.
Shing
Jae quietly drew the sword he had returned to his waist.
It was too dangerous to simply ignore the girl and move on.
She had already killed the escort target, Shido, once. Any risk factor had to be eliminated completely.
That was how Jae had survived in the world that had been destroyed.
[Stop! What are you doing?!]
But this world was not Jae’s world.
[Don’t kill her!]
Kotori’s voice came through the communication device tucked inside Jae’s helmet, stopping him.
“...”
Even so, Jae did not put the drawn blade back.
It was a silent signal that meant: Wouldn’t it be safer to eliminate the danger?
[You’re thinking something like, “Why not just kill her?” aren’t you.]
At the question that followed, he nodded.
[Ha... That girl is AST. You know that, right? If you kill someone who belongs to the state, it becomes a hassle!]
So that was it. Fair enough.
Killing a soldier belonging to a nation brought far more trouble than one might expect.
No matter how dangerous the target was, once killed, another danger would return in its place—sometimes an even greater one.
Having understood that, Jae gave a small nod and returned the sword to his waist.
[Haa... ]
A sigh escaped Kotori as she watched the whole sequence unfold.
The idea of eliminating a danger was not wrong, but not when the target was a person.
However, the common sense that human lives should not be taken did not apply to Jae. So Kotori had not spoken of “common sense,” but of the “reason not to kill,” in order to keep Jae from killing the girl.
No matter how much culture she taught him, there was no way to fix his habit of eliminating danger.
In the world Jae had lived in, danger had to be removed without hesitation. That was only natural.
Leaving the collapsed girl behind, Jae turned his head and looked at the man and woman speaking in midair.
“Sh, Shido! What am I supposed to do...!”
An angel filled with negative emotion, with the will to kill burning inside it, and wrapped in a gloomy light.
The angel, unstable enough to seem ready to explode if even lightly touched, was about to release its power.
“Well, if you kiss her, it should solve it...”
“How do you even kiss someone?!”
“Just put your lips—mmp?!”
Before Shido could finish speaking, his mouth was sealed by another mouth.
As their lips met, the Spirit’s spiritual power was sealed away.
“...Unnecessary.”
Jae, who had quietly prepared the [Silent Prayer] talisman, put it back into the air.
Then he caught Toka and Shido as they fell from the sky.
Ignoring Toka, whose spirit body had turned into particles and left her naked, Jae set her down on the ground and muttered while looking up at the sky.
“Commander.”
At his low call, light enveloped them, and before long they were transported from the park to Fraxinus.
Thus Shido’s first conquest ended successfully.
“...”
However, the girl who had seen Jae did not leave the area for some reason.
She watched as Jae’s broken leg, which had been shattered when he fell from the sky, turned to ash and then regenerated with a flickering little flame.
“I, this freet...”
A nameless anger slowly moved toward Jae.
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