Seoul Incident (3)
The instant I cleaved through the monster’s skull and burst free, I ran a complete diagnostic on everything.
The body was riddled with wounds from the immature, foolish dragon thrashing about however it pleased, yet overall it had been built exactly to my original design. A few places had been left unfinished because the idiot dragon had skipped several final adjustments and charged out on its own, but it was still serviceable enough to use.
That covered the flesh. Next came the mind.
The mental side was completely outside every projection I had made. The dragon’s ego—something that should never have awakened, that had no right to awaken—had woken up. Cause unknown. The result: a clueless hatchling had been piloting my body as if it were its own. Whether it truly knew nothing remained unclear, but one fact was certain—it knew nothing. Had it properly grasped the situation, or even understood what kind of being it was, it never would have committed the litany of acts it had.
The sole silver lining was that, consciously or not, it had upheld the Principle without fail. Everything else was thoroughly displeasing, yet for that one point I was grateful. I had no desire to become a monster without having accomplished a single thing.
Lastly, starlight. I stirred a modest amount and inspected what emerged. As expected, it was far less than when I had been a magical girl. Whether that was because I had nullified the contract with the constellation, or because I had attempted transformation into a monster, I couldn’t say. Either way, it was fine. Lost starlight could simply be replenished. Ordinarily I would have gathered it gradually, but refined starlight lay scattered everywhere right now—I need only take it.
I looked at the sky-blue-haired girl, the one who, even among magical girls, had always seemed especially flustered and lacking in confidence. The moment our eyes met, she let out an ugly scream and clung to my younger sister standing right beside her.
Pathetic. Weak. There were those who burned with fighting spirit despite possessing even less starlight than this girl. Yet she cowered in terror while people lesser than herself strove harder. Worthless. Therefore she had to be Selected out.
H-hey? What the hell are you trying to do?
From the far side of consciousness the dragon babbled nonsense, telling me to stop. I knew full well that all it could do from over there was make noise, so I moved at once.
I locked onto the sky-blue magical girl, accelerated my body, and leapt. The tiger-like creature that had been harassing me the entire time immediately accelerated in turn and came charging at me again.
…Perhaps I should clear that one away first, rather than the sky-blue hair.
A monster was a sin simply by existing.
I halted mid-flight, sprayed blood from my wings, forged every drop into weapons, and launched them all along the trajectory the monster would take. Dozens of blades streaked toward it at once; the monster twisted every limb with desperate force, batting some aside and shattering others.
Watching it, I could only feel contempt.
How on earth had something so tedious been designated special-grade? If it had earned the rank for sheer comedy, that I could almost accept—its fighting form was fairly ridiculous for a monster. Spinning like a whirlwind in midair, swatting away relatively slow projectiles…
Well, that much blood was enough to spend on it. Any more would have been waste.
“Ha… haah… haha, is that all you’ve got?!”
Despite putting everything into the defense, the monster was still covered in fresh wounds, yet it looked at me and laughed wildly, as if merely having blocked the attack were a triumph.
Mm. In a sense, that really was all it amounted to.
Not me—you.
I used hematokinesis to redirect the shattered, ricocheting fragments back toward the monster, then clenched my fist.
“What—”
The hundreds of shards it had broken with its own hands buried themselves in its body, severing muscle and bone. When I turned my thumb downward and drove the fragments further, it managed—special-grade or not—to slam itself into the ground still impaled rather than let them tear free through its flesh.
“Ghk… hah…”
Having been struck by me, its acceleration had come undone; the monster’s back looked almost sluggish now. I stomped through it, driving my foot straight into its body.
“Consider it an honor that you can be of even this much use to the world.”
Through the foot I had planted, I drained starlight and blood from the monster. Being a monster, the quality of its blood was poor, but it was saturated with starlight, so that hardly mattered. Compared to a magical girl the amount was small, yet if I could both dispose of trash and collect starlight in the process, it was a net positive.
I left only a few drops of blood and a handful of starlight, sucking out everything else. What had been overflowing with muscle moments earlier was now nothing more than a withered corpse. That a spark of life still clung to it even in this state was almost impressive, I supposed.
Not that it mattered. I had reduced it to this so I could use it as a blood bag.
I shook my foot free, kicked the desiccated monster aside, and turned my gaze back to the sky-blue-haired magical girl. She was still stuck to my sister like a limpet. Disgraceful. Even allowing for a non-combat ability, the sniveling was past the point of endurance. Unnecessary. Something like her had no place in the world my sister would live in.
I shot toward her at once. A few of the magical girls who had only been watching until now finally began to move.
…Regrettably, my sister was not among them.
The small mercy was that she could at least track me with her eyes now. At this rate she would eventually be able to move quickly as well. I only hoped that day would come soon.
Sister was sister—right now I needed to focus on the magical girls.
Most of them were slower than I was. Far from matching my speed, the majority floundered as if swimming through honey. Two of them, however, were only slightly slower than me. One radiated starlight like flame from her body; the other crackled with something like electricity. Both were impressive. Strong, and good. They did not flinch before a powerful enemy, and they would not forgive evil. Exactly the kind of girls this world needed.
So, if possible, I intended to leave those two alone. They looked as though they would make excellent seniors for my sister.
I casually evaded the fire and lightning streaking toward me, then loosed a rain of blood arrows at the magical girls who had started to move. Roughly four-tenths were shot down by flame and thunder, but the remaining six-tenths poured down on the rest. I had not fired them with lethal intent—only enough force to pin their movements—so even the weaker ones should have been able to block them without much trouble.
That did not mean all of them managed it.
“Kyaa!”
“Ugh…”
A dozen or so magical girls took blood arrows and plummeted. About five of them looked damaged enough that their transformations nearly broke. There was no one more pitiable than those who possessed the will but lacked the strength, so I watched them fall with a measure of sympathy.
May you grow strong someday as well.
With that silent prayer I continued toward the sky-blue-haired girl I had marked. The flame-wreathed girl and the one crackling with lightning pursued me furiously, but once I began flying in earnest there was no chance of them catching me.
I seized the sky-blue girl without further resistance, and inside me the dragon raised a racket.
What the hell are you doing right now—let Sky go!
So her name was Sky. Something I hadn’t particularly wanted to know.
The moment I grabbed her, desperation flooded the faces of the two girls chasing me.
“Let Sky goooo!!!”
“You caaan’t do thaaat?!!!”
They knew the difference in speed better than anyone, yet desperation still drove them to shout words that would never reach me while they simply flew as hard as they could. They weren’t attacking, I noted—probably afraid of catching their comrade in the blast.
…Fine. My thinking had shifted a little.
Originally I had intended simply to dispose of this dead weight on my sister’s ankle, but if those two valued her that highly… I could lighten the sentence to reclaiming a portion of her starlight.
I casually tossed the still-terror-stricken Sky upward into open air, dissolved my body into a pool of blood, and lunged at the brainless monster I had left behind. When my mass collided with it, a hole punched clean through its body in my exact shape, and blood and starlight flooded into me.
I rose again, caught Sky once more—and instead of simply holding her, I drove a hand that was still liquid blood straight into her abdomen. Instant despair washed over the faces of the two magical girls racing toward her, but I wished they wouldn’t look like that. I was only reclaiming something that had no business remaining with someone unqualified to hold it.
Starlight began to flow in through the hand buried in Sky’s stomach. With everything I had absorbed so far, I might even be able to exercise the authority granted by a contract with the stars. A trial run wouldn’t hurt.
I had drawn roughly half her starlight when it happened.
A pure-white beam of light nearly severed the arm I had thrust through Sky’s abdomen.
I knew the owner of that light. Even while she had been pinned beneath the dragon, she had still worn that proud expression—my younger sister.
More than the pain, the fact that she had moved at all struck me as far more remarkable. When I turned my head, Jua was still swimming through honey, yet she was moving, however slowly. She had grown through the intensity of her emotions.
For a moment I forgot we were in the middle of a battle and smiled as I looked at her.
“You’ve grown.”
Yes. That was enough.
Failing to drain every last drop of Sky’s starlight no longer mattered much. I pulled my arm free of her stomach and flung her toward the people desperately calling her name.
“Sky…!”
Strength was fine, but not so much that they could afford to drop their guard with me standing right in front of them.
I was just about to hurl a spear at the lightning-wreathed girl reaching out to catch Sky when—
You—that’s enough! From now on I’m taking over, so get back in! Right now!
The dragon’s ego writhed inside me, and my head suddenly spun.
…How absurdly unfair.
As I was dragged back beyond the edge of consciousness, I thought, once again, that a dragon really was a dragon after all.