A low, muffled voice, grating like some wrong noise struck out of metal—you couldn't even tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman.
If she hadn't already known that the figure hidden beneath that heavy, towering pitch-black armor was Kirishika,
Su Yuzu probably never would have guessed—never would have even thought to guess—that this massive frame and the Kirishika who looked downright small beside it were one and the same.
[You—]
[—Kneel!]
The dark golden vertical pupils hidden behind the heavy armor had locked onto Su Yuzu completely.
As that alien, metallic voice fell, Su Yuzu felt a boundless, terrible weight press down on her.
That terrible weight didn't leave her so much as a sliver of hope to struggle against it. It forced her knees to bend.
And faintly, from somewhere deep inside her, a voice seemed to rise.
[Kneel—]
"All you have to do is kneel."
Nearly a kilometer away from the front line where Su Yuzu and the "Seat of Evil" stood facing each other.
Neither of them had been targeted head-on by the "Seat of Evil." This was only the backwash of it—and even that pressure was enough to crush Tsukiyomi Fuya and Unohana Chiyo down until they could barely hold themselves upright.
Tsukiyomi Fuya, who had been drifting in the sky all this time, dropped like a small bird with a broken wing, and the wounds that Saint Michael's radiant power had knitted shut a little tore open again.
Blood welled out of the gashes beneath her wool coat, and Tsukiyomi Fuya's face twisted into something quite ugly.
Only by borrowing that Fifth Sequence power did she manage, legs shaking, to barely brace herself and stay off her knees.
But she paid no attention at all to her own condition. Her expression was tight with worry as she stared off toward the front line.
"Yuzu..."
Beside Tsukiyomi Fuya, Unohana Chiyo had already staggered down onto one knee.
Su Yuzu had nourished and Fed her plenty of times by now—but between the efficiency limits of the Basic Combat Records and the Intermediate Combat Records, the restriction of only one card per day, and... Teacher Chiyo's own physical condition.
So Unohana Chiyo's strength still sat stalled at the Second Sequence.
Still, if Su Yuzu could break through to the Third Sequence, she would probably be able to pull Teacher Chiyo's level up soon enough.
A faint silver light leaked around the woman's knees. She drove her blade into the sea beneath her, transmuted now into something like metallic crystal, and braced against the hilt, forcing herself up inch by inch.
Unohana Chiyo, too, turned her gaze toward Su Yuzu.
Wrecked as they both were, Tsukiyomi Fuya and Unohana Chiyo seemed far more worried about the girl standing face to face with that terrible figure.
Su Yuzu lifted her head and looked at the black, savage armor in front of her.
On a metal throne like a snow crystal, the lord of that "Throne," horns jutting high, gazed down at Su Yuzu.
The pitch-black metal plating had shed its old rust and threw back the moonlight.
A sliver of faint dark golden light spilled from the seams of the helmet as she watched Su Yuzu.
Su Yuzu showed no sign whatsoever of kneeling.
That power should have belonged to a "Throne" and a "Throne" alone.
Just like the "Erasure" of the Sword of Erasure.
After rule-type ability users fell into the Abyss, their power—like the "rules" they had held before—rotted and ascended in that deepest dark into something that was itself very nearly a rule.
Kirishika's rule was "Erasure."
And the "Seat of Evil"—her power was "Supreme Lord."
But—
Just as only a rule can stand against a rule.
Su Yuzu held four separate powers taken from rule-type ability users or from "Thrones." How could she possibly bend her knees before the "Seat of Evil"?
[Besides...]
The girl stood on a stage of moonlight.
The pattering rain couldn't put out the Holy Flame blazing at her waist. All it did was soak the long skirt she wore, until the heat of the Holy Flame boiled it off again in curling white mist.
She looked at the armor before her without a trace of a smile.
Su Yuzu hated the feeling of having to look up at anyone.
She tilted her head back and stared at the dark golden glow bleeding through the seams of the "Seat of Evil's" helmet.
And she seriously started considering a question she'd once turned over in her head while watching anime with scenes like this.
How did a body as small as Sister Kirishika's hold up armor this enormous?
And the "Seat of Evil" hidden underneath it, who ought to look exactly like Sister Kirishika—was she wearing anything at all?
She'd heard that the stronger an Aberrant got, the less fabric they had on.
If that applied to the "Seat of Evil" too, wouldn't her butt get cold?
Su Yuzu wanted, urgently, to pry that armor open and find out.
The girl's small, blank face sent an unexpected prickle of dread crawling through the "Seat of Evil."
It was as if a cold snake had climbed her spine and settled on her shoulder. She could feel the grain of its scales. It flicked its tongue at her ear and hissed out a warning.
"You—" A voice full of authority.
Then the "Seat of Evil" saw the girl in front of her raise a hand.
Almost carelessly, Su Yuzu lifted her right hand and swept it down—catching the "Seat of Evil's" voice out of the air.
"You—"
"—Kneel!"
The "Seat of Evil," who was as good as the Abyss Will itself, was about to sneer at the girl's absurdity and her overreach—after all, every scrap of power Su Yuzu had at this moment came from Saint Michael. A Fifth Sequence healer's blessing had only granted Su Yuzu the right to stand upright in front of a Sixth Sequence Aberrant.
And then... she heard a thunderous crash.
That towering, terrible armored figure had dropped to one knee before the throne of six-pointed snow crystal.
The "Seat of Evil" stared, stunned, at a Su Yuzu who suddenly seemed to have grown taller.
Now it was the "Seat of Evil" who had to look up at Su Yuzu.
Even through all that heavy armor, Su Yuzu felt as though she could see the shock on the "Seat of Evil's" face beneath it.
The girl's right hand brushed lightly across the crown of her head.
Her fingers met something very soft. A wreath of flowers.
After serving Su Yuzu as a ring, as a bracelet, as a collar, as a garter—and even, once, as a bra—
the "Godmother's Laurel" had finally shown the form that was hers by right.
She was one of the strongest Holy Relics in the world.
And what she held inside her was a power called "Supreme Lord"—a power on the same tier as a rule.
"How can this be!!!" There was something almost disbelieving in the armor's voice.
She looked at Su Yuzu, and out of the depths of her rose an enormous cold.
Su Yuzu only tightened her fist.
She finally understood what Sister Kirishika had meant when she said she was only an empty shell—and what it meant that she had traded away her most precious thing to her.
The "Seat of Evil" in front of her was nothing but an empty shell too.
All she possessed was the crude, brute strength of a Sixth Sequence Aberrant.
And her authority—
The authority called "Supreme Lord," the authority that had earned her the name "Seat of Evil"—
twelve years ago, Kirishika had already entrusted it here, to her.
Which was why the achievement she'd received when she awakened had been called the "Evil Karma Throne."
Because it didn't stand for Su Yuzu's "Seat of Karma" alone.
It was two "Thrones" fused into one.
Su Yuzu looked at the "Seat of Evil" with no expression at all. "So that's how it is—"
"You look so vicious, so terrifying, like you're about to rule the world."
"Turns out you're only..."
"An empty shape. Nothing more."
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