A saint and the Holy Mother.
If someone had been born with physical characteristics of both of them…
…it would create Acqua of the Back.
He had probably perfected his talents, given to him at birth, by improving them as God’s Right Seat.
How deep did the power within him run?
“You were born with two differing qualities and, at the same time, two sets of physical characteristics that overlapped. That is why my gifts alone lost in power to yours, as I am only a saint.”
To begin with, God’s Right Seat was a term for those above humans, those who aimed for the kami-jou, a “God above.” Their goal had never been to be simple saints.
Because Kanzaki herself was a “mere” saint, it would be very difficult for her to envision such territory. But the “certain power” that saints and angels possessed had the trait of stabilizing once a certain line was crossed. Airplanes were easier to control if they were slower, but too slow and they would fall. Acqua was purposely flying that plane at very high speeds, thus stabilizing it.
It was above a spacious emptiness from a saint’s perspective, that line where high speeds stabilized.
By possessing the qualities of both a saint and Mary, he was born with that stabilization line, which was unlike normal saints, who would lower their speed to try to stabilize their power. That was doubtlessly why he’d succeeded in forcing all that power, which would have been unstable and out of control, to come together.
However…
“On the other hand, that means you have a weakness,” said Kaori Kanzaki.
Yes—for planes flying at Mach speeds were obviously harder to manage, their control more delicate, than planes taking it slow.
“You must have even more of a weakness than I do, than any saint—to spells that specifically target them!”
Kanzaki stopped talking.
To talk to someone else.
Not Acqua but her Amakusa comrades.
In other words…
“The Saintbreaker!!”
“!”
“Acqua parried all your attacks or dodged them—but that spell was the only one where he used a magical method for a genuine defense. That is where our chance at victory lies!!”
Normal humans couldn’t completely control saintly power, much less use both it and God’s Right Seat at the same time. Kanzaki was a saint herself, so she knew that already.
At first, she thought there was some special spell he was using to perfectly control his power.
She never found out what it was—but of course she didn’t.
He didn’t have one at all.
“What would happen if we used the Saintbreaker, which has never been tested, and hit Acqua, another exceptional being, with it? Even he couldn’t imagine it!!”
Acqua hadn’t used his full power to block the Saintbreaker just because it would render a fraction of his stocked power unusable for a few seconds.
“The Saintbreaker purposely upsets the balance of his Jesus-like physical characteristics, causing the power inside to run rampant, which disables the saint for a time. Normally, it would only silence him for a few seconds, but Acqua has characteristics of both a saint and Mary. The end is clear for all to see—he would detonate!!”
The spell he used depended on delicate inborn traits more than sainthood.
In other words, he couldn’t strengthen it through artificial methods.
If that godlike balance was thrown off even slightly, everything could go up at that moment. It was like a drag on a machine that could hit at over a thousand kilometers per hour. Because it handled immense force, you needed careful attention. That was why Acqua had used his “full power” to go on the defensive.
“…”
With his mystery solved, Acqua didn’t say a word.
But his face did change.
A grin.
Not the condescending sort before now. He’d been named perfect, but there was a single pinhole. They’d pointed it out—and that made the man, Acqua, give a grand smile.
He wouldn’t panic over a weakness.
That wasn’t what battles were about.
He launched into another series of fierce attacks. Kanzaki barely managed to stop them with her Seven Heavens Sword, exhaling just a bit. Then she slightly changed her sword’s angle, purposely causing a shock wave from her strike’s aftermath.
It wasn’t aimed at Acqua. Instead, it destroyed something behind him.
Part of the scenery, buried under heaps of rubble—a rusted piece of barbed wire.
…I see. That’s what they’re after…?!
By the time Acqua looked up, the sharp wires, cut to shreds and launched into the air, had just formed a circle. Following that, Kanzaki’s wires, the Seven Glints, sliced through their surroundings once again. Magical meanings abstracted one after another from the pile of debris, coming up like carvings.
What appeared was a giant cross, a spike like a sharp steel pile, and a crown of thorns.
In other words…
“Symbols of Jesus’s crucifixion!!” he shouted.
Anyone wielding a fraction of Jesus’s power as a saint inherited his weaknesses, too.
Still, if rubbish like this could defeat a saint, nobody would have trouble.
In fact, against a normal saint like Kanzaki, it wouldn’t do much.
But…
Acqua of the Back was a special saint.
Someone with even rarer physical characteristics than the other saints in the world. One who simultaneously wielded the powers of saints and the Holy Mother. In exchange for that immense power, he needed to have incredibly delicate control. That was why the symbols of the crucifixion Kaori Kanzaki formed in this place alone would have an effect.
One might think a crucifixion spell wouldn’t have anything to do with Mary, but in this case, that wasn’t correct.
Yes—for Mary was also considered the highest Crossist saint in all of history.
“…!!”
Kanzaki sensed something bubbling up inside Acqua’s physics-defying body.
A change so clear even an ordinary saint could see it.
In other words, Acqua of the Back…
“…He’s wavering,” stated Kanzaki confidently.
The powers of saint and Holy Mother overlapped each other at the central core of Acqua’s existence. Now, under pressure from an outside source, they were competing, sending up harsh, screeching cries.
Right now, they could do it.
So Kaori Kanzaki bellowed, “Preparations are complete! Longinus, grant us the final key to the rite of crucifixion!!”
“!!”
Itsuwa, who gripped the Saintbreaker’s key, understood Kanzaki’s words. She immediately took out a hand towel, then wrapped it around her Friulian spear before leveling it at him.
“…Interesting.”
But Acqua moved first.
“The Amakusa-Style Crossist Church, was it? I dub thy name worthy of remembrance!!”
Then he jumped twenty meters—no, over twice that, all the way through the crater connecting the fourth and fifth stratum. As he went, dozens, hundreds of wires danced through the night sky, but none of them could stop him.
The city lights filtering through the circular crater made it look like a giant moon.
And with that artificial moon behind him, he readied his mace.
“The Holy Mother mitigates severe punishment.”
Before, this attack had crashed down on Kaori Kanzaki with all the destructive force of an asteroid collision. Enough power to crush her even at full strength. On top of that, the power would easily double due to the height of his jump. Amakusa couldn’t possibly stand up to it as they were now. It would destroy this entire fifth stratum.
“This power, which at times appeals directly to God’s law. Let it wrap you in mercy and ascend to heaven!!”
With immense speed, Acqua shot downward. His mace, bathed in the nightscape’s light, left a b
luish-white trail in its wake.
No!! thought Kanzaki, building a defensive line with all the wires she’d positioned in advance, trying to stop the iron hammer. But it wasn’t enough. His strike blew through it and continued to approach the ground.
This attack had hit Kanzaki directly, so she knew: If she was hit by another, she would die. Not only her but the rest of the nearby Amakusa members, too.
The safety net…!!
As Kanzaki gritted her teeth in frustration, Itsuwa aimed her spear overhead.
The Saintbreaker.
But the preparations for the spell weren’t finished yet. They wouldn’t make it.
Give up…
Kaori Kanzaki reached for her sword.
Acqua descended like a wave of pure destruction. She looked up, glaring, pressing her feet hard into the debris-laden plaza. In a flash, she drew the katana, positioning it horizontally.
It wasn’t for a counterattack.
Everything was for defense. She immediately drew every mark, every sign, every symbol from every time and place in her mind to build a spell to serve as a shield.
I won’t give up!!
Acqua of the Back fell to the ground with all his might.
Light raged.
Kaori Kanzaki’s eyes, her ears, her nose, her tongue, her skin—all of it disappeared.
5
Destruction.
She couldn’t even understand that one word.
Her five senses were dead. The world was white. Nothing made it to her brain. Not the raging shock waves, not the whipping dust, not the smell of metal, not the sensation of being crushed. Was this how far destruction needed to go to be true—to be pure annihilation?
“…”
She needed time for her whited-out senses to return.
Then Kanzaki realized something.
Little by little, her senses were returning.
They hadn’t been lost. They were recovering, which meant…
What…?
Acqua of the Back’s attack should have destroyed everything in its path. It should have taken the lives of all the Amakusa, including her, with change left over. Kanzaki, however, was unharmed, as though his spell had disappeared. There was no damage anywhere that she could see.
It’s…gone…? The spell, the magic—it’s gone?
Kanzaki came to and looked up.
One act, in disregard of good or evil, strong or weak, that would cancel any sorcery without an issue.
She knew of only one person who could do something so absurd.
“Could it…be…?”
Her senses returned.
Her own words made it to her ears, and it was as though it signaled the rest of her senses to breathe back into her. Despite Acqua’s nightmarish strike, the scenery was the same as before, as though literally nothing had happened. And one person stood at the center of it.
Touma Kamijou.
He suppressed Acqua’s magical attack head-on, then grabbed the mace hard enough to crush it.
If Acqua of the Back had swung his mace with purely physical strength, the blood-covered Kamijou’s right hand would have been crushed to pieces. But this was a purely magic-based attack. And his right hand had the ability to blow away any supernatural powers, no matter what they were.
Even if Acqua’s attack had been an extremely powerful spell.
His right hand brutally nullified it all!!
“What…?!!”
“…”
The bloody Kamijou murmured something to the shocked Acqua. Nobody else heard it. And then Kamijou collapsed, leaning up against the mace. He hadn’t run out of energy—he was trying to stop Acqua from moving.
“!!”
Seeing that, Kanzaki moved.
On his own, Kamijou would be knocked away with a flick of the mace. But she used Acqua’s momentary shock to her advantage, discarding the Seven Heavens Sword and grabbing Acqua’s shoulders as though she were gripping a log, trying to stop both him and the mace from moving.
“Bastards!!”
Acqua shouted something, but the two of them weren’t listening.
The wound-covered Kamijou and Kanzaki were looking at the same place.
To Itsuwa, of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church.
To Itsuwa, just a regular sorcerer.
“Please, leave this to me…”
Itsuwa readied her spear again, grabbing its shaft with her hand towel, as the other Amakusa members started up their own unique spells.
“I will hit this time!!”
With a roar, Itsuwa launched.
The girl’s slender body, under the protection of several spells, accelerated at Acqua.
He tried to evade her.
But his saintlike physical force was sealed away by another saint, Kanzaki, and when he triggered a special Mary spell to drive her away as God’s Right Seat, Kamijou’s right hand blew it all away.
“Ohh…”
He was only incapacitated for a few short seconds.
But that was all they needed.
“…ooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
At that moment, Acqua gave a war cry.
It wasn’t out of terror.
He realized he wouldn’t be able to dodge the next attack, but his conviction wouldn’t waver. In fact, the battle shout had been to give him extra force so he could take a big step forward, toward the charging Itsuwa.
The Saintbreaker.
Itsuwa’s spear split apart, turning into a single bolt of lightning. Free from its physical restraints, it became a strike that dominated the space, bursting toward Acqua.
Ba-boom!! The noise rattled the very air.
The flash of lightning struck Acqua in the gut, then escaped out his back, this time penetrating into his entire body.
The impact from the hit caused Kamijou and Kanzaki to pull back.
A cross—of light, not sparks—burst out behind Acqua, vertically and horizontally. However, Acqua’s body, which had taken the hit, leaped straight into the center of that cross, where the lines intersected.
His body, having received the Saintbreaker, careened over meters of concrete tile. The giant mace left his hands, and he soared away, plunging into one of the fifth stratum’s man-made ponds. As he shot under the surface like a cannonball and went out of sight, another change occurred.
Mana went out of control.
Acqua of the Back had detonated.
When his attributes of saint and Mary suffered the Saintbreaker, they reacted, began to compete, and then caused a rapid chain of internal explosions the spell would never have been able to cause otherwise.
Kap!! A flash of light engulfed the midnight-dark pond, illuminating it as though it were midday. The flash momentarily blinded everyone, but they still heard the eerie noise of large amounts of water vaporizing all at once.
When Kaori Kanzaki opened her eyes again, Acqua was no longer there.
But all the water in that man-made pond had evaporated. It had been blown away, along with the pond’s edge. A pillar of water vapor, the same thickness as the pond itself, rose straight up. The giant column collided with the ceiling section of the underground city, then dispersed in every direction. The sight was overwhelming, like a giant tree that had lived for over a thousand years, belying the incredible force of Acqua’s abrupt detonation.
INTERLUDE FOUR
About ten years ago, in a deserted port.
William Orwell rubbed his punched cheek.
The Knight Leader was the one who’d struck him.
Between the discontented pair was the Third Princess of Britain, who had been labeled incompetent by the world. Of course, that was why it hadn’t been a problem for her to sneak out of the castle like this.
“That was for lying to me and taking all the good parts for yourself.”
The Knight Leader cracked his knuckles, approaching William with an expression he’d never let society see.
“I’m not done. I haven’t punched you for leaving En
gland yet. So let me make sure. We can’t have any mistakes happening. Here’s my question. Do you really plan on leaving England?”
“Yes.”
As soon as William answered, the Knight Leader punched him hard in the face again. Thump!! Meanwhile, the third princess yelped and covered her face.
William’s face was actually the calmest of them all, despite the beating. “…Are you drunk?” he asked.
“If I was, I’d be hitting you with the empty bottle.” The Knight Leader dropped the leather rucksack and fished around in it. “I’ve got some good scotch. First-rate, without a drop of caramel. Pure barrel color. Yeah, it’s full, but don’t worry about it. You’re leaving today, after all. I’m giving you such a big present that I think I have the right to punch you.”
“What are you angry about anyway?” asked William.
The Knight Leader paused, then eventually said, “You’ll be more than just a mercenary.”
“Have you ever heard the word overestimation? No, you probably haven’t.”
“I worked so hard to get them to finally accept you as a knight in your own right, too…Talk about ruining someone’s efforts. You planning on becoming a great artist somewhere, then? You have to be insane to choose a life people will only acknowledge hundreds of years from now.”
“I don’t know a thing about art. Nor of the lives of those who create it.”
“…What is your goal? You must have a good reason for turning down this invitation.”
“It is not as though I wish to do anything special,” answered William casually. “As I said before, knights and mercenaries do not mix. Knights in this country have great authority, but that isn’t enough to solve some problems. The same goes for mercenaries. I may be free to roam, but I am finding it quite difficult to enter into the realm of trust.”
“…You…”
“I need to have both, as I am sure this incident has taught you. There are problems a swollen group alone cannot resolve. That brings into necessity observation from an outside source. That observer cannot be special alone, either. The cogs forming society may come in different sizes, but everyone influences them and turns them together. This is a truth that must not be forgotten.”
William was correct, and the Knight Leader knew his personality, so he fell silent, expression morose. Seeing his old friend make that face put a subtle smile on William’s lips.
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 16 Page 18