"What's wrong, Kanon?"
Cid quietly watched Kanon Kanase, who had suddenly stopped moving. She merely turned expressionlessly toward one of the base's walls, her deep blue eyes utterly still, as though they could see something beyond the layers of reinforced metal. Cid instinctively asked the question, only to realize a moment later how pointless it had been.
"…"
Just as Cid expected, Kanon Kanase showed no intention of answering him. She simply stood there in a daze.
"Did something go wrong?"
Cid tilted his head and muttered under his breath, but he did not think much of Kanon Kanase's sudden change. It was perfectly normal. Based on the movies he had watched in his previous life, test subjects created by mad scientists like Kanon Kanase had an extremely high chance of malfunctioning during operation. Honestly, he was already pleasantly surprised that his inexplicable ability to give her commands had kept working for this long.
"Hmm. In that case, I'll just carry you."
Making the decision on his own, Cid reached toward the back of the lab coat wrapped tightly around Kanon Kanase, intending to pick her up and carry her away.
Halfway there, however, his hand struck something resembling an invisible wall.
Huh?
Before Cid could process what had happened, the invisible barrier blocking him revealed its true form.
Wisps of something drifted through the air. They appeared colorless and blended perfectly into the atmosphere, yet the instant one laid eyes on them, their noble and sacred nature was unmistakable. They felt utterly incompatible with everything around them.
This holy energy, of which even the smallest trace would be enough to elevate someone to the pinnacle of the world, now surrounded Kanon Kanase in enormous quantities.
No. Although it seemed to surround Kanon Kanase, the sacred energy was not actually touching her.
More precisely, what appeared here was only a projection.
A blank, white space filled with seemingly endless sacred energy existed within the very laws of the world. An ethereal figure stood within it, overlapping and intertwining with reality...
That was what Cid could see at this moment.
It was undeniably a natural part of the world, yet until now, it had shown no discernible purpose. Normally, it resembled a bugged program frozen in place, doing nothing except proving that it existed.
Now, however, that program had come alive.
Using Kanon Kanase as an anchor, it had begun operating and extending itself into reality.
"Click!"
As though Cid's earlier attempt to reach out had pressed some unseen switch, the pair of pure white wings protruding from Kanon Kanase's back, which Cid had dismissed as decorations, abruptly spread to their fullest extent.
The walls around them, constructed from layer upon layer of compressed alloy, offered no more resistance than sandcastles on a beach. The wings pushed straight through them with ease, rendering all that reinforced metal completely useless as protection.
But compared to Kanon Kanase's outstretched wings and the slit-like seams running across them, Cid was far more concerned with something else.
The sacred energy surrounding Kanon Kanase's phantom in another dimension seemed to have used its projected anchor in reality to manifest here for real...
"Hahahahaaaah…"
The melody of a sacred hymn seemed to echo in his ears.
Under normal circumstances, Cid would absolutely have made some comment like, "What level of villain is this? She even gets her own BGM when she appears."
But right now...
"Kanon, you really have... given me one hell of a surprise!"
The instant that energy appeared, a tremendous force, so powerful that it seemed to exist an entire dimension above reality itself, erupted outward in every direction.
The energy was so fundamentally incompatible with the surrounding world that the contrast between the two became visible, forming an actual wall of light.
Yet despite the sacred nature of that energy, what it brought to reality was indiscriminate destruction.
Everything swallowed by the curtain of light was reduced to nothing in an instant. Extreme heat accompanied the tremendous impact, while the wall of light expanded outward at terrifying speed.
In the blink of an eye, nearly the entire experimental base vanished from Itogami Island.
All that remained was a hemispherical crater, its surface melting before rapidly solidifying again as enormous clouds of white vapor billowed upward.
So hot...
As the person standing closest to Kanon Kanase when the explosion occurred, Cid had personally experienced the might of that attack and was more qualified than anyone to judge it.
His verdict was...
"Absolutely terrifying…"
Cid ran his fingertips across his white tuxedo, feeling several places where the fabric had been scorched, and sighed from the bottom of his heart.
This was the water-repellent tuxedo he had spent a fortune developing, specifically so it could withstand virtually any extreme environment.
Its defensive ability was admittedly somewhat lacking. Sharp objects such as scissors could still cut it.
But its heat resistance was supposed to be completely genuine.
After all, he had paid an absurd amount of money for it. According to the seller, this tuxedo could withstand temperatures exceeding a million degrees.
Even taking the most conservative estimate possible, Kanon Kanase's attack just now must have exceeded one million degrees.
"But... doesn't this count as defective quality?"
Cid rubbed one of the blackened patches on his clothes and stroked his chin thoughtfully.
Could he turn around and sue the merchant for selling substandard goods?
He had only bought this thing a few days ago, and it was already damaged. It was hard to argue that the seller bore no responsibility.
"…Forget it. Too much trouble."
After thinking about it for a moment, Cid abandoned the idea.
He was hardly short on money. There was no need to do something that unscrupulous.
Not that he had much of a conscience in the first place.
Cid looked around.
The mud and stone on the ground, liquefied by the intense heat, were releasing enormous amounts of steam as they gradually solidified again. Beyond the heat capable of melting everything, the tremendous shockwave produced when the sacred energy manifested in reality had also wreaked havoc.
Beyond the boundary formed by sections of crystallized ground, huge stretches of earth and stone had been peeled away, exposing a tangled network of steel pipes and electrical cables beneath them.
Buildings that had once stood upright had collapsed, leaving layer upon layer of rubble.
Unfortunately, it only looked impressive.
Kanon Kanase had not actually scored a single kill.
Reality was not a game, after all. NPCs did not respawn, and Cid had already cleared out all the terrorists in the surrounding area beforehand.
At that thought, Cid paused.
Then he raised his head and looked at the culprit responsible for all the destruction around him.
Kanon Kanase hovered in midair, beating the wings behind her that appeared holy at first glance but were terrifying in reality. She paid no attention to Cid, who had survived the earlier blast.
Her vacant eyes remained fixed on the same direction she had been staring toward when she first stopped.
"So what am I supposed to do now?"
Cid complained in frustration as he stepped forward. Enduring the intense heat radiating from the sacred energy, he walked through the air until he reached Kanon Kanase's side.
From what Cid could see, Kanon Kanase's soul was enveloped in that sacred energy, and the energy itself was driving her evolution.
In theory, that should have been a good thing.
But that was exactly where the problem lay.
This sacred energy was fundamentally incompatible with reality. Once Kanon Kanase completed her evolution, she would only be able to exist within that empty, pure-white space for the rest of her life.
His earlier plan of leaving everything to Natsuki-chan had also fallen apart.
In her current state, Kanon Kanase would destroy everything around her merely by existing. Handing her over to Natsuki-chan would be no different from trying to get Natsuki-chan killed faster.
Killing Kanon Kanase outright was obviously impossible. Cid could not bring himself to do that.
If she were unconscious or being controlled, he could at least find some way to physically wake her up.
But he had absolutely no idea what to do when she was only half-conscious like this.
Unaware of Cid's thoughts, Kanon Kanase simply stared into the distance.
Her gaze rested on Yuuma Tokoyogi, the girl bound to the blood-red Cross.
Following the process engraved into the laws of the world by which a Witch formed a contract with a Devil, Yuuma Tokoyogi had been forcibly designated as the contractor, compelling the Devil's true body to be summoned so that a contract could be established.
Humans were born with seven spiritual centers.
In theory, anyone could develop these seven treasures granted to humanity by Heaven. Once all seven were fully developed, that person would become qualified to obtain terrifying power from some unknown realm, power far beyond that of ordinary people.
The various factions of World No. 2 had different explanations for this power.
However, in the Aldegyr Kingdom, where Kensei Kanase had obtained this information and technology, the most widely accepted explanation was that it was the power of "Gods."
That was because anyone who borrowed this power would, without exception, eventually have their body transformed by divine energy, becoming a powerful being close to a "God."
An "Angel."
Unfortunately, very few people in this world were capable of successfully developing their spiritual organs, and even fewer could use divine energy to ascend into Angels.
Under Kensei Kanase's original experimental plan, there were to be seven Faux Angels, each possessing a different spiritual central organ that had been strengthened to the limits of the human body.
The seven Faux Angels would fight one another.
By taking the spiritual organs from the other Faux Angels and integrating them into themselves, one of them would eventually gather all seven fully activated spiritual organs, gaining the possibility of evolving into an Angel.
That had been Kensei Kanase's original plan.
But after meeting Laugus and obtaining additional information from Aya Tokoyogi, which allowed him to understand the possible true nature of "Angels," an even greater ambition arose within Kensei Kanase.
He wanted Kanon Kanase to become a true Angel, rather than a Human who had merely ascended into one.
The "High-Dimensional Angel" was nothing more than a rigid program.
It instinctively granted power and elevated qualified individuals into the "High Dimensions," turning them into Angels.
Beyond that, it did nothing.
Because it had crashed.
All the other Seeds that functioned as its components had been extracted, leaving this largest and strongest Seed incomplete. It could do nothing except act according to instinct.
So what if...
What if they found a way to use an external stimulus to revive this program that had remained frozen for thousands of years?
Would it automatically repair its missing components in order to eliminate that external stimulus?
Would it begin functioning again, with Kanon Kanase becoming part of the system that had come back to life, allowing her to take its place and become a genuine "Angel"?
It was an outrageously bold idea.
Fortunately, the plan succeeded halfway.
Unfortunately, it only succeeded halfway.
Pure and sacred wings spread behind an impossibly slender figure. Merely looking at her was enough to evoke the image of a divine messenger as she stood suspended in the sky.
She gazed toward the enormous pillar of darkness that had suddenly erupted into the heavens in the distance.
As though answering its challenge, divine Qi endlessly surged around the Angel as she beat her wings. Vast quantities of divine Qi descended from the High Dimensions into reality, then immediately soared upward in a towering column.
One black, one white.
Two colossal pillars of light stood at opposite ends of Itogami Island, piercing straight into the heavens as tremendous amounts of energy poured from them.
Few knew why they had appeared.
Yet both pillars brought the same indiscriminate destruction to the world.
"Hum…"
The pure white wings began to distort.
The six fissures that had always remained embedded within them slowly opened from the center, revealing six hideously grotesque crimson eyes beneath.
Eyes passing judgment upon this world.
A solemn hymn echoed from nowhere.
A torrent of sacred light poured outward without restraint.
The divinity dwelling within this Angelic body suppressed its original personality.
The insignificant Human had become the vessel of the "Born Angel."
...
"Hahahaha! That's it, that's it! Keep going! Kill the Third Primogenitor! Make that precious immortality of hers the advantage she regrets most! World Devil!"
Katerea's voice rang out in near-madness.
Brandishing her blood whip, the seductive woman watched the Third Primogenitor get struck down by the enormous black hand for the second time and burst into wild laughter.
The inn had already been destroyed the instant the black hand appeared, but that hardly mattered.
The moment everyone sensed the violent and dangerous aura emanating from the hand, even the Third Primogenitor, who had been content to sit back and enjoy the spectacle until then, immediately chose to attack.
Some attacked Laugus.
Some attacked Katerea.
Others attacked Yuuma Tokoyogi.
Unfortunately, none of it accomplished anything.
The instant any attack touched that long, twisted, keratinous black hand, it immediately vanished and dispersed, turning into Magical Power that was absorbed into the pitch-black arm.
Absolute defense.
Absolute power.
The strength contained within this single Devil arm exceeded the combined power of everyone present.
Epsilon was certain they had absolutely no chance of winning in a direct confrontation.
The more reckless among them had already been killed twice.
Had the arm not been relatively slow, none of them would have survived until now.
And one thing had to be remembered.
What they were currently fighting was merely one arm that had not even fully manifested yet.
But compared to their immediate predicament, Epsilon was more concerned about something else...
"Keep going, keep going, keep going…"
Standing behind Yuuma Tokoyogi, Katerea continued shouting commands, completely failing to notice the strange expression that had appeared on Laugus's face nearby.
"No... that's not right. Something's wrong…"
"Then tell me what the hell is wrong?!"
Epsilon roared toward Laugus behind her.
Those two muttered repetitions of "wrong," combined with the strange look on his face, immediately reminded Epsilon of Eta.
Could this guy be another idiot who had created an experimental subject he could no longer control?
"My prediction was wrong."
Even in the middle of the battle, Epsilon's furious shout drew everyone's attention.
Feeling their gazes on him, Laugus readily admitted his mistake.
"I used the Lord of Netheril suppressing the Devil as the benchmark for my calculations. Based on that, the World Devil should only possess strength at the so-called Transcender level. Otherwise, Netheril could never have succeeded in seizing the contract between the Contract Demon and the Witch…"
At that point, Laugus hesitated and looked toward the Third Primogenitor.
"But if the World Devil isn't the strongest existence in this world, then how could a single projected arm that hasn't even fully manifested suppress the Third Primogenitor? And if I use that as the benchmark…"
"BOOM!"
Before he could finish speaking, a massive column of black mist erupted into the sky from Yuuma Tokoyogi's location.
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