by Yuu Miyazaki
“I’m sorry, but it’s private,” he answered flatly.
At that moment, the sharp-eyed girl—Tuulia—stepped forward. “What was that? If you won’t answer us, then you really must be fooling around with her!”
“F-fooling around…?”
“We’ve got proof! You were on a date with her during the school fair!” Päivi called out.
“Right, right! We saw it for ourselves! You spent the whole time flirting!” Monica added.
“Ayato…” Saya’s eyes had turned dangerously cold as well.
“And now you’re on a date with someone else! You’re an enemy of all women! Have some shame!”
“Seducer! Lecher! Satyromaniac!”
“Where did you learn those words?!”
They were busy throwing insults at him, but the shiest of the group—Mahulena—who had remained silent until now, looked up at him. “Um… I’m terribly sorry about this, really…,” she said, bowing her head.
She seemed like the most reasonable of the five.
“Um, let me try to explain… Mr. Amagiri, there are a lot of women around you, it seems. So we were worried whether you might just be playing around with Sylvia… I’m really sorry to ask you something so private, but can’t you please explain your relationship with her to us?”
“There’s nothing to explain,” he murmured, scratching at his head. “I’m only helping her out, lending her my strength. We don’t really have a relationship like that…”
“Lending her your strength? What do you mean?”
“I—I can’t really answer that…”
Sylvia’s search for her missing music teacher, Ursula Svend, was a private matter. He didn’t have the right to tell anyone about it without her permission.
“What kind of answer is that?!” Miluše snarled, finding it as hard to accept as he had expected.
“…No, it’s enough for me.”
“Saya?”
“So you’ve stuck your neck out again, huh?” She turned toward him with a gentle smile.
“Ah-ha-ha… Well, I guess so.”
“Then do not worry.” She turned back to Rusalka, pointing her finger toward them just as Miluše had earlier. “You’ve misunderstood Ayato. So quit it with these false accusations.”
“What?! You’re defending him?! He could be playing around with you, too!”
“Ayato might be dense and always butting into other people’s business and completely careless when it comes to the consequences of his actions…but he isn’t the kind of person to trick anyone—or fool around with them. I know that, for sure.”
“Argh…! You’re pretty impudent for someone your size!”
“…Better to have a child’s height than a child’s lack of sense.”
“What?!”
Saya’s and Miluše’s gazes met explosively.
At that moment, Ayato felt a sudden surge of prana.
“—!”
“Watch out—!”
Almost immediately, a sword cut through the collapsed building that blocked their path—the rubble falling to the ground with a thunderous clash.
Luckily, the members of Rusalka had already noticed it, leaping out of the way before he could finish speaking.
“Damn, this is a pain in the ass!” a dull, stinging voice from the other side of the cloud of dust said. “Hey, Medulone! You sure this is the right way?” The rough voice, though completely at odds with her appearance, seemed to belong to a young girl stepping over the wreckage.
She looked about the same age as Ayato, with long, unkempt hair and eyes that were sharper even than the menacing sword she gripped in her hands.
Ayato had seen her somewhere before.
Don’t tell me…
If he was right, then it must have been she who’d cut through the rubble.
“Good grief… There’s no need to be so reckless, Roverica. There’s no point showing off out here.”
The next to step out of the dust had, by contrast, her hair done up neatly and was wearing a pair of elegant glasses. Her hourglass body looked a little older than the first girl’s, and she carried herself with composure.
“Quit making a fuss. I just want to get back as soon as possible. Anyway, this is all your fault for wanting to take that damn detour.”
“There’s no need to be so rude. It ought to be remembered as the place where President Liberio seized the highest glory. It’s only natural to want to see it with my own eyes, wouldn’t you say?”
“You think those ruins have any meaning? How pathetic,” the girl with unkempt hair spat out.
“Hey, you! What do you think you’re doing? That’s dangerous!” Tuulia called out to them both in protest.
Ayato could understand her complaint. If the wreckage had been cut through at any other angle, it might have collapsed right on top of the five girls.
“Huh?” The girl frowned before rapidly closing the distance to Tuulia and driving her fist into her stomach.
“Koff?!”
She didn’t stop there, continuing to kick her mercilessly until she doubled over in pain.
“Gah…!”
“You ain’t got no right to talk to me like that! You wanna die or something?” The girl’s voice was as dark as winter’s deepest night. She flung Tuulia against a nearby wall before raising her sword overhead.
“H-hey, wait!” Miluše cried out, but she was too slow.
The girl swung down her blade, but just before it could reach Tuulia’s chest—
“—!”
“Stop it!” Ayato, having broken his seal, blocked her sword with the Ser Veresta.
Saya, meanwhile, was aiming a handgun-shaped Lux directly at her. “Are you mercenaries all so quick-tempered?”
The girl stepped back, clicking her tongue.
As Ayato readied himself with the Ser Veresta, the girl—Team Hellion’s offensive specialist, Roverica—scowled at them in displeasure.
Hellion was a mercenary team, contracted by Le Wolfe to take part in the Gryps. Every one of them was a member of HRMS, a major private military company belonging to the Le Wolfe group, and all were experienced in real-life combat. Given that they were one of the tournament’s most talked-about teams, Ayato had naturally watched several of their matches and recognized each of the faces and names.
“That Orga Lux… Ah, I get it. You’re—”
“Ayato Amagiri, alias the Murakumo, and Saya Sasamiya, of Seidoukan’s Team Enfield,” the bespectacled girl—Medulone—interrupted. “And this must be Queenvale’s Team Rusalka.”
Their school crests were the twin swords of Le Wolfe, but their uniforms were different. Their white-and-red outfits were the formal dress uniforms of HRMS.
“Maybe no one has told you, but contestants in the Festa are only allowed to fight in designated areas during the tournament. You do realize that what you just did is enough to have you disqualified?” Ayato warned her.
“Ha! You think I care? How about I do this?” She hefted her blade aloft.
The sword—the Vershe-Velun—was an Orga Lux said to have been used by the current president of HRMS, Liberio Pareto, when he had conquered the Lindvolus during his own student days.
“I couldn’t care less about the rules. You think I’m gonna do what someone like you tells me to?!” Roverica’s eyes burned with hatred and malice as she began to step toward him.
“Stop, Roverica,” a dark figure making its way through the ruined building called out.
The voice belonged to a man with a large build, wearing the same kind of uniform as the others. He looked to be older than Medulone. It was Team Hellion’s leader.
There were two more shadows standing behind him.
“Don’t get in the way, Nevilleworth!”
“I can’t do that. Dirk won’t be happy if we get disqualified.”
“You think I care about that swine?!”
“…In other words, you would make President Liberio lose face. Do you want that to happen, wom
an?”
Roverica lowered her searing eyes at the force of his words. “Tch!”
“You’ve been in a foul mood ever since we came here. Or was it that meeting with Minerville and that girl, Minato Wakayama, that set you off?”
“Hmph! They’ve got nothing to do with it,” Roverica growled. “I’m just—”
At that moment, Tuulia ran past Ayato, gripping her guitar-shaped Lux by its neck. A trident-shaped beam of light emerged from its body. “You think I’m gonna let you get away with that?!”
“Ha-ha! So you do have some backbone?” Roverica, blocking the attack with the Vershe-Velun, let out a venomous laugh.
“Everyone, get ready to support!”
“…Got it!”
“Okay!”
When Ayato turned around, the other members of Rusalka had all activated their Orga Luxes, standing ready for battle.
“H-hold on, everyone! Didn’t you hear what Mr. Amagiri said?! If we fight here, we’ll be disqualified!” Mahulena was calling for restraint, but her protestations seemed to fall on deaf ears.
“Be quiet, Mahulena! They attacked one of us! We can’t let that go!” Miluše’s gaze burned with anger, and as she held up her own guitar-shaped Orga Lux, a glowing sword emerged from its body.
“…These people are crazy, Ayato,” Saya murmured as she readied her gun, clearly astonished by the scene unfolding before them.
The fact that even she thought so was proof that things had truly gotten out of hand.
“I’m with you there, but we can’t just leave them alone…”
Looking at it objectively, the best option would obviously have been to let them fight among themselves and benefit from the outcome—one team being eliminated outside the tournament, with the other being disqualified. But seeing that they were already involved in the situation, it would be irresponsible, he felt, to leave now.
Moreover—
“Don’t you even think about running off, Amagiri! You look like the strongest here!” Roverica, exchanging blows with Tuulia, called out after him.
It didn’t look like they would be able to leave even if they wanted to.
“Good grief, first one thing, then another…” Nevilleworth sighed, his expression unchanging, as mana began to swirl around him with tremendous force.
“What?! He’s a Dante?!”
They hadn’t seen him use anything that even resembled an ability in any of the preliminary matches. He must have hidden that fact well.
“Try to dodge it. I don’t want to be disqualified just yet.” Nevilleworth raised his right hand—a huge boulder coming into shape above him. It had to be more than thirty yards in diameter, enough to block out the light of the setting sun, its shadow engulfing everyone present.
“H-h-hold on! Everyone, retreat, retreat!” Miluše called out in a panic just as Nevilleworth lowered his arm.
At that moment, the huge boulder plunged into the ground.
“Ha-ha-ha! You’re the ones who’ve bitten off more than you can chew!” Roverica called out before her voice was drowned out by the sound of the colossal impact.
Ayato barely had enough time to cover his face with his arms to shield himself from the violent burst of wind.
“…They really are out of their minds, those people…”
Ayato, waiting for the whirling dust to settle, deactivated the Ser Veresta, returning it to the holder at his waist.
In front of him lay a gaping pit, at least the size of a full city block. Nevilleworth’s ability must have torn a hole in the surface layer of the earth.
The ground in this part of the redevelopment area was undoubtedly more brittle than in other areas of the city due to its long neglect, but it still shouldn’t have been destroyed so easily. The power behind that ability must have been beyond comprehension.
On the other side of the abyss, Nevilleworth, along with the other members of Team Hellion, stood watching them. They were too far away to reach. Not even a Genestella would have been able to leap that distance.
Nevilleworth had probably intended to separate the two groups so they couldn’t attack each other—although, it was certainly an unorthodox approach.
Finally, the mercenaries turned and disappeared into the mass of abandoned buildings. Roverica alone paused to look over her shoulder, glaring in their direction, but she, too, soon left to catch up with her teammates.
“Phew… I hope we don’t end up having to face them,” he muttered as he wiped the sweat from his brow.
“Hey, everyone! Are you all right…?!” Tuulia called out from a distance behind him.
Several faint voices could be heard from somewhere in the distance.
Many of the buildings around them had collapsed due to the force of the impact, making the redevelopment area look bleaker still.
“Well, we had better get going, too… Huh? Saya?” But when he looked around, his childhood friend was nowhere to be seen.
Saya’s skills were good enough that she should have had no difficulty evading the attack.
But even so, Ayato, worried, entered the state of shiki to stretch out his senses—
When his mobile began to ring.
“…Ayato, are you okay?”
As he opened the air-window, Saya’s face appeared before him, although the picture was unexpectedly dark and distorted. “Ah, Saya. Thank goodness… What about you? No, wait, where are you?”
“I’m not sure… Probably somewhere underground.”
“Underground…?”
He approached the edge of the pit and peered in, but it didn’t look particularly deep, probably only around twenty yards or so.
When he and Kirin had fallen through Asterisk’s surface, they had made it all the way down to the ballast area, the lowest section of the city’s superstructure. This time, however, the collapse looked to have stopped at an underground passage—or else at the drainage channels.
The boulder created through Nevilleworth’s ability had already dissipated into raw mana, leaving not a trace of its existence.
However, there looked to be countless cracks in the rubble leading into underground passages, and the ground around them still hadn’t stabilized.
“So you’re trapped somewhere… This isn’t good.”
“…I don’t think I can blast away this much rubble with my Luxes.”
“Don’t even try; that could cause even more of it to come down.”
He had no idea where she was, but it would be better not to do anything that might end up worsening the situation.
“I see… Then let’s find another way.” Saya frowned. “Oh, there’s something else, too.”
“Huh? What?”
At that moment, Tuulia’s voice echoed from behind him: “Whaaat?! You’re trapped?!”
“…Team Rusalka’s leader is here with me.”
“Huh…?” Ayato turned to find four of Rusalka’s members gathered in a circle around an air-window. Miluše, her face projected in the center of the display, looked as if she was about to break out in tears.
“So you’re down there together…?”
“It looks like it.”
The other members of Rusalka seemed to have realized that, too, turning to Ayato in unison.
“This is just getting more and more complicated…”
Deep in thought, he trailed off but still managed to flash them all a stiff smile.
“…Anyway, our top priority has to be getting you both out of there.”
Everyone, Ayato included, nodded at Mahulena’s suggestion.
The situation being what it was, now wasn’t the time to quarrel, so Rusalka had consented to a temporary truce. That said, Ayato didn’t really have anything against them to begin with.
“Maybe we should call Stjarnagarm and wait for help…?” he suggested cautiously.
“Impossible, absolutely impossible! If we do that, they’ll find out there was a fight here!” Monica dismissed him flatly. She puffed her cheeks dramatically, but he
r eyes were serious.
“…It isn’t like anyone else got caught up in it, though, so I don’t think we would be disqualified for a one-off incident… The chairwoman will probably give us a scolding, though.” Mahulena hung her head with a heavy sigh but then immediately looked up as if making up her mind. “But I agree with Mr. Amagiri. Their safety comes first, after all.”
“Eh, wait a second, Mahulena, wait!” Monica pouted. “Come on, Tuulia, say something!”
But Tuulia looked back at them reluctantly. “…No, I’m with Amagiri here.”
“What, why?”
“I didn’t want to admit it, but he did save me. I owe him for that, so I can’t be ungrateful,” she said with a blush before hastily shooting a glare aside, into the distance.
“…In that case, I do, too.”
“Argh…! You always just go along with everyone else, Päivi!” Monica stamped her feet like a child, her shoulders slumping in defeat. “Fine, I get it. Do whatever you want. I was only thinking about all of us, but now I look like the bad guy.”
According to what Ayato had read, Monica was supposed to be the oldest member of the group, but her sulking figure, kicking at some lose debris, was unmistakably childish.
“Um, that’s all well and good, but…,” Miluše began.
“…I don’t think we can wait that long,” Saya finished for her in a flat voice.
“Eh? Wh-what do you mean?” Mahulena was unable to disguise her concern.
“There was a weird sound a little earlier…”
“…Basically, the ceiling might fall in.”
“You mean it might collapse again?” Ayato asked.
Saya nodded. “…Yeah. But this passage looks like it leads somewhere, so we can try to go deeper in.”
“Right…”
Asterisk’s underground blocks were different in each area and at each depth. The subway network, for example, was particularly dense in the central district, but it barely extended into the outer sections of the residential area. There should, however, have been at least one route connecting it to the central terminal.
On the other hand, the mazelike arrangement of underground passages and drainage tunnels crisscrossed the entire city.
For security reasons, however, such details weren’t available to the public. The underground blocks were under the jurisdiction of the Infrastructure and Maintenance Department and were out of range of normal means of communication. The fact that Saya and Miluše were able to maintain a mobile connection at all was no doubt because they were relatively close to the huge crater, but if they were to move farther into the underground labyrinth, they would probably lose contact with the surface.