10. Demon in a Bottle (33)
10. Demon in a Bottle (33)
Cold blades arced through the air in a storm of cutting light.
The shriek of steel tearing through the air fell like a downpour.
"Graaarrgh!"
The Avatar convulsed violently.
Hundreds of daggers glanced off her rigid carapace and scattered.
Barely five percent had struck true on the initial volley.
That was enough.
Five percent still meant dozens of blades.
The daggers wormed into the seams between the Avatar's exoskeletal plates.
Steel punched through cartilage and rent flesh.
Fluids in a riot of colors burst out from everywhere.
It looked like a fistful of paint tubes squeezed until they ruptured.
The Avatar thrashed, screaming.
It hurt. She had never felt pain like this.
She had trusted the shell too much.
The flesh beneath was far too soft.
Her antennae stiffened upright.
To cause her such agony.
She would repay it tenfold, and then kill her.
But the next sight made her blood run cold.
While she tried to right herself, the deflected daggers had risen back into the air and were hovering.
Maya flicked her wrist.
The blades reoriented themselves onto her.
"Th... th..."
Terror dawned in the Avatar's eyes.
Maya did not hesitate.
She sent the daggers flying again.
The Avatar's screams filled the ballroom.
The same process repeated itself.
Maya's daggers stabbed into the Avatar's joints, and stabbed, and stabbed again.
With every attempt, the number of blades that found their mark increased.
The knives embedded in her body slowed the Avatar's movements more and more.
Silver trajectories scrawled a tangled web across the air.
Yet Maya's expression held not a hint of elation.
Her skill had leaped forward dramatically, and still she felt no joy at all.
Only a deep, sinking sadness.
In less than a minute, all one thousand daggers had been expended.
"Grrrk... grrk... grrk..."
The Avatar lay sprawled on the floor, choking out ragged breaths.
She had gained immense power, yes, but her mind was still that of a sheltered eighteen-year-old.
She possessed neither the grit nor the endurance to bear such pain with fortitude.
"Kill you...!"
But she had spite enough to fuel her hatred.
Panting hoarsely, she forced herself upright.
Cold sweat slid down Maya's forehead as she watched.
Simultaneously aiming a thousand knives was no trivial feat.
The mana drain was one thing, but calculating every trajectory and impact force demanded a staggering amount of mental focus.
She stood locked in place like stone, feverish and utterly unable to move.
The Avatar recognized her state.
"Khh-hh... that's right. You're not getting off easy either, little bitch."
The Avatar crawled toward her on all fours.
Maya still could not budge an inch, even as the creature closed the distance.
"Die!"
The Avatar hurled her whole body down to crush her.
A thunderous boom fractured the marble floor.
She rose with a triumphant smirk.
Surely the girl had been flattened into pulp.
Instead, she felt that sensation again—the distinct sting of having the rug yanked out from under her.
Where she had struck, the image of Maya still knelt, cold sweat glistening on her brow.
An illusion again. She had been tricked again.
"Arrgh! You little—!"
Maya was just as startled.
The only thing she had been able to do was wring out the last of her mana and smear transparent paint over her body.
Then, out of nowhere, a false image of herself had appeared and lured the Avatar away.
Who had cast that illusion?
Her mana bottomed out, and her invisibility unraveled.
As her body gave out and she started to collapse, someone caught her by the shoulders.
She looked up at the person who held her.
A blond man with an untroubled smile stood there.
The person she respected above all others.
Her teacher.
"Troupe... Leader?"
"You've done well, Miss Maya. Leave the rest to us."
Us?
Maya turned her head slightly.
Someone she had seen somewhere before stood at Wonderstein's side.
A short, plump woman wrapped head to toe in cloth.
It came to her in a moment.
She had seen her at the Rose Windmill Cabaret's opening-week show, the Kinema.
The narrator who had voiced every single character's dialogue all by herself.
The Thousand Voices, Lumion.
The Deputy Leader of the Silver Screen Circus.
***
I let out a breath of relief when I saw Maya was safe.
She could truly count herself blessed by fortune.
One of the Avatar's authorities, Hell Manifestation, summoned the domain of its Demon God with the Avatar's body as the focal point. That was why Madosa who served other Demon Gods could not use their powers here.
When Hell Manifestation activated, the affected zone separated from the outside world—but the rooftop happened to sit right on the boundary.
It took some time, but I had been able to enter this place together with Lumion, who had also been on the roof.
I used the Evolution Lab's "Diagnosis" function to check Maya's condition.
She was simply exhausted. No injuries.
"Whose blood is that?"
At my question, her expression hardened into stone.
She stared toward a corner of the ballroom and murmured,
"Karen is dead."
"Miss Karen...?"
I followed her gaze.
A single body lay there, limbs shattered and askew.
The Evolution Lab confirmed it.
Karen's heart had stopped.
But it offered hope at the same time.
"It has been two minutes since cardiac arrest. Blood flow has ceased, oxygen supply is cut off. There is approximately one minute remaining before brain cell necrosis begins."
My words could have sounded like a cold death sentence, but Maya was a clever girl and understood my meaning immediately.
"Then..."
Her pupils wavered visibly.
I nodded with confidence.
"Yes. If I restore her heart and body within one minute, she can be revived."
I laid Maya down on the floor with care and went straight to Karen.
There was not a second to waste.
"Deputy Leader Lumion."
"I know."
Lumion pressed close behind me.
She was also an exceptional illusion mage. She could cast invisibility magic. However, the spell required her to stay near the target.
The Avatar was still rampaging after the illusion Lumion had conjured.
I placed my hands on Karen's body and got to work.
First, I supplied oxygen to the brain cells.
Then I purged every bit of spoiled blood, replaced it with healthy blood, reconstructed the heart, aligned the broken bones, and restored the damaged tissue.
Devoluts drained away at a rapid clip.
Lumion stood back-to-back with me, guarding.
As I worked through the treatment, I spoke to her abruptly.
"You're Arno, aren't you?"
I felt the tremor that ran through her back.
The Evolution Lab could analyze the state of living things.
That meant, if the Diagnosis Function would not work on someone, that person was not a living organism.
Earlier, during the acrobatics contest, I had tried to examine Arno's physical state.
But his body was impossible to analyze.
The Evolution Lab could not detect his existence at all.
His appearance was not real. It was an illusion.
"How did you know?"
At Lumion's question, I gave a light shrug.
"I have a talent for analyzing living creatures. How did you produce the voice? There shouldn't be sound in an illusion."
She hesitated briefly, then answered.
"I can bestow physical force upon my illusions. On throats and mouths as well."
The explanation was terse, but I had already formed a working hypothesis in my mind, and I understood at once.
"You materialized vocal cords? Heh. So that is also the secret of the Thousand Voices."
"That's right."
A remarkable woman.
To perform two roles alone.
In their show, Arno had served as the nexus of the illusion.
And she had performed the narrator's role at the same time?
Her skill fell nothing short of the title "greatest illusion mage."
"Astonishing."
Lumion shook her head at my words.
"That's my line. I've never seen medical magic on this level."
Karen's major organs were mostly restored.
She was past the immediate crisis.
She had begun to breathe in shallow gasps.
All that remained was restoring her outward form and cleansing the necrotic cells spread through her body.
"It’s mado—a gift Kirkeus gave me."
Just then, bubbles began frothing up through the air around us.
The Avatar turned her head toward us.
"There you are!"
"We've been spotted."
The Avatar came thundering our way.
Lumion dropped the invisibility spell.
"I'll hold her. You focus on healing that girl."
In front of her, the illusion of a great iron net shimmered into being.
I gathered Karen's body into my arms and rose.
"Then I leave her to you."
I left the din behind and retreated swiftly to a corner of the ballroom.
Behind a large decorative piece.
A good place to hide.
But someone was already there.
"Miss Clara."
The blue-haired girl was crouched behind the decoration.
Unlike the others around us, she seemed lucid.
"Mast... I mean, Troupe Leader..."
I looked at the object in her hand.
A bloodied dagger.
And on her throat, a fresh cut from where the blade had just been pressed.
"What were you trying to do?"
I grasped the situation at once.
Sinepekus's authority.
It preyed upon its victims' traumas.
And Clara, until very recently, had been a girl contemplating suicide.
I did not know exactly what had reached into her heart, but there was no doubt she had been moments from ending her life.
"Th-this was the only way I could think of."
At her words, I let out a small sigh.
I could tell her decision had not been impulsive.
Why else would anyone bring a knife to a party in the first place?
She had probably been carrying it with her this whole time.
She had still been nursing the thought of suicide.
"Did I not tell you? Do not treat your life so lightly."
At my words, she did not respond and only averted her gaze.
What sort of ache inside her heart had made her the one person here who chose to try to die?
There seemed to be a secret behind her, deeper than the rumors that circulated.
"Doesn't it grieve you? That your life should be decided by a Demon God's petty games."
At that, her head snapped up.
Her lips moved faintly, then she bowed her head and murmured,
"But... I can't help it. I was born this worthless from the start."
A deep, entrenched self-loathing.
I had no more words for her.
Coming from an uninvolved stranger, any pretense of understanding would only sound like meddling.
Instead, I resolved to do what I could.
I laid Karen, now fully treated, on the floor and approached Clara.
"Come here. I can't speak to the rest, but your body—I can take a look at that."
She stared at me, eyes wide.
"R-Really?"
"Of course."
She was surprised, but she did not doubt me.
She had just watched me heal Karen with her own eyes. That was reason enough.
And the moment I touched her throat, I understood everything.
The Evolution Lab told me her body was breaking down.
That if left as she was, she would be dead within a week.
Terminal, then.
Now her despair made sense to me.
"Can you... really fix my body...? With your power, Troupe Leader...?"
As Devoluts flowed from me, the wound on her throat knitted smoothly shut.
Clear liquid welled up along the rims of her eyes.
She looked at me, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
The Evolution Lab informed me that preventing her body's breakdown would require periodic injections of Devoluts.
The cost would not be light.
If I considered only the game and efficient strategy, I should have denied her here and now.
But I could not abandon a friend who thought of taking her own life because of a failing body.
She reminded me too much of my old self.
"Yes. Of course."
.
Leaving Clara staring at me with a dazed expression, I rose to my feet.
The fight between Lumion and the Avatar was deadlocked.
Neither could land a decisive blow on the other.
The Avatar kept swinging uselessly at the illusions she created, and Lumion could not penetrate the rigid exoskeleton encasing the Avatar. She was an exceptional illusion mage, but she lacked the skill for Shooting.
"Let us talk once this matter is settled, then."
I took a small bottle from my breast pocket and drank its contents.
It was something I always carried for contingencies.
Having emptied the bottle, I strode toward the Avatar.